Wednesday, April 30th
5:00 – 7:00 pm
Room C204, CUNY GC
Akshay Khanna works at the intersections of anthropology, activism, theatre and development praxis. S/he has been associated with the Queer movement in India and elsewhere for over 15 years, has worked as a human rights lawyer, focusing on issues arising out of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and contributed to drafting the law against domestic violence in India. Akshay is currently a Research Fellow with the Participation, Power and Social Change team at the IDS, and the convenor of the Sexuality and Development Programme. S/he has been centrally involved in developing a programme of work and an intellectual agenda around ‘Unruly Politics’ along with colleagues and students at the IDS.
Co-Sponsored by: Political Science Program; Anthropology Program; Sociology Program; The Center for Place, Culture and Politics; The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies; Women’s Studies Certificate Program; QUNY and the Social and Political Student Theory Association (SPTSA).
India still has this caste system, even if shunned officially I’ve been told families still observe it, e.g. in the choice of partners for their children for (arranged) marriage etc. But i wonder where queers and transgender people fit into this? Typically in stratified societies those on the lowest rung tend to look for someone to look down to too and often find it in whoever is deviant (and the deviance is being accepted as “bad” by the higher echelons of the same society).