CSGS Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University » India

Anti-trafficking and Rehabilitation Discourses: A Case Study in HIV/AIDS Intervention Strategies in India

Robert — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:52:43 +0000

a lunch talk with Satarupa Dasgupta

January 27, Friday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Satarupa Dasgupta, Postdoctoral and Transition Program for Academic Diversity Fellow, New York University

Articulation of sex work entails the commonly observed connection between sex work and trafficking, proposed delegitimization of sex work, and rescue and rehabilitation propositions for sex workers. I analyze the policy documents of global aid organizations and legislations, and examine the case of Sonagachi Project, a HIV/AIDS intervention program that targets sex workers in one of the largest red light districts of South Asia. The project is spearheaded by the sex workers themselves, who act as peer outreach workers, and there are no external organizations involved. By conducting interviews with commercial female sex workers from Sonagachi area I examine the sex workers’ perspectives on the articulation of trafficking and sex work, anti-trafficking legislations in India, the delegitimization and criminalization of sex work, rescue and rehabilitation propositions for sex workers, compulsion and abuse in sex work, and the reasons for pursuing sex work as a profession. I also assess the strategies adopted by the Sonagachi Project to restrict trafficking and the entry of unwilling and minor individuals in sex work.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor Gallery
between University Place and Broadway
wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th & 12th Streets

Bring your lunch — we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Facebook event page here.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, please call CSGS at 212-992-9540 or email csgs(at)nyu.edu.

Spaces of Exception: Violence, Technology and the Transgressive Gendered Body in the Indian Call Center Industry

Robert — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:58:12 +0000

Radha Hegde
Media, Culture and Communication
NYU Steinhardt School of Education

Dec 2, 2009
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Institute for Public Knowledge
20 Cooper Square
5th Floor Main Conference Room

With India being drawn into global marketplace as the high-tech solution center for business problems and operations, new types of labor demands and work environments have surfaced. The growing influence of new media technologies and mediated workplaces have created conditions of labor for women that entangle the categories of the national and transnational, private and public. Through a close reading of the discourse that emerged after the rape and murder of a call center employee in Bangalore, this talk engages with the sexual politics of transnational work in India’s call centers.

Radha S. Hegde is an Associate Professor in the department of Media, Culture and Communication. Her research examines three overlapping areas 1) media, globalization and migration 2) gender and transnational media cultures 3) Culture of work in new mediated environments. Her earlier work focused on the politics of reproduction and violence.

This event is open to the public with photo ID.

Decriminalization of Homosexuality in India: The Repeal of Section 377 and the political, legal and public health implications for the LGBT community

Robert — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:47:50 +0000

Thursday, November 5, 2009

A roundtable presented by the South Asia Association

Co-sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian International and Public Affairs Association; and the South Asia Institute.

A panel disussion with Myna Mukherjee, Vivek Divan, Dr. Viraj Patel and Prashant Iyengar on the recent ruling on Indian Penal Code 377 that decriminalized homosexuality.

Moderated by Aseem Chhabra. Supported by a grant from the Kraft Family Foundation.

Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Location: Knox Hall, Room 207, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont Avenue

Myna Mukherjee is the Founder/Artistic Director of Engendered, a New York non-profit, trans-national arts and human rights organization focused on presenting issues of gender and sexuality in the South Asian Diaspora through performance, music, visual art, and film. Mukherjee serves as the Director/Choreographer for the critically-acclaimed Nayikas, New York’s first resident, feminist, classical Odissi dance theater company. Before Nayikas, Mukherjee was the Artistic Director for Mosaic, the South Asian festival of dance at the Lincoln Center, in association with the World Music Institute. In addition, Mukherjee has produced and curated several South Asian events and festivals in New York, including Diasporadics 2000, the South Asian arts and activism festival. Mukherjee has also choreographed for the Western stage in Paul Knox’s Kalighat and Centered Margins, a theater festival produced by Chashama and Circle East. Before her involvement in arts and human rights issues, Mukherjee spent a decade on Wall Street as a Senior Management Consultant. She earned a Masters degree in Information Systems and Finance from Carnegie Melon University.

Vivek Divan, a lawyer from Bombay, is currently a consultant with the UNDP cluster on Gender & Sexual Diversities within its HIV/AIDS Practice in New York. As Coordinator of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit in India from 2000 to 2007 he oversaw and was involved in the legal aid, advocacy, research and legal literacy work of the Unit. In that time he was part of the team that drafted legislation on HIV/AIDS for India and strategized campaigns and lobbying on law and human rights issues related to sex work and treatment access. He was also closely involved in the public interest litigation related to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This included legal research and strategizing and most significantly community mobilization around the case. He has been an outspoken activist on queer rights in India, having written in the press and participated on television talk shows on the issue. Since 2000 he has been on the International Advisory Board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Prashant Iyengar is a member of the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore – a group of lawyers, researchers and activists who work on various aspects of law, legality and power. ALF has been actively involved in the LGBT movement for several years including an ongoing close affiliation with Voices Against 377, a consortium of non-governmental organisations (NGO) that has worked for the repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Prashant’s main interests are in the areas of human rights, environmental law, technology and culture and he has been an enthusiastic supporter of the rights of sexuality minorities in India.

Dr. Viraj Patel received his B.A. in Asian Studies from Emory University in Atlanta and his M.D. from the Medical University of South Carolina. He is currently in his last year of residency in Primary Care & Social Medicine in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. In addition to completing the standard training in Internal Medicine, he’s also focusing his training on social justice, community medicine, and global health. After finishing medical school and prior to starting residency, Viraj Patel moved to India and volunteered with The Humsafar Trust in Mumbai, one of India’s first NGOs to specifically address the health needs of MSM and Transgenders and conduct community based outreach in India. He now facilitates Humsafar Trust’s student internship program and collaborates on various research and service projects with HST. He co-founded Humsafar International in NYC, which focuses on capacity building for sexual identity and health programs addressing marginalized populations. He serves on the board of directors for the Westchester Square Partnership in The Bronx, an academic and community collaboration founded to address service needs and conduct participatory research aimed at health needs, empowerment, and building social capital among the South Asian communities in the Bronx.

Our Family film screening

Robert — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:08:47 +0000

Directed by K. P. Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro

October 20, Tuesday
7 to 9 PM

CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 9204-05
between 34th and 35th Streets

2007, 56 min., India
Tamil with English Subtitles

Set in Tamilnadu, India, Our Family weaves together excerpts from Nirvanam, a solo theatrical performance by Pritham K. Chakravarthy, and the lives of three generations of transgendered females. Aasha, Seetha and Dhana, a family bound together by ties of adoption, belong to the community of Aravanis (also known as hijras in some parts of India). The performance by Chakravarthy and the daily lives of the three family members bear witness to the tumultuous journey towards a reinvented selfhood, a journey fraught with violence, exploitation, affection, and courage. This award-winning film allows the viewer to reinterpret Nirvanam, a Sanskrit term with religious connotations, as an act of liberation and transformation—from male to female.

Post-screening discussion with the filmmakers.

K.P. Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro are professors at the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

For more information about the film visit: http://ourfamily2007.wordpress.com/

Presented the CUNY Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) and co-sponsored by CSGS.

Reframing Globalisation and Internationalism: Feminism in India and the Question of Asia

Robert — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:56:04 +0000

Mary E. John, Director, Center for Women in Developing Societies, New Delhi

ISERP’s project on “Gender and the Global Locations of Liberalism,” and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Columbia University, invite you to a talk and discussion with

Mary E. John is Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Women in Developing Societies, in New Delhi. She is the author of Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, Theory and Postcolonial Histories, and editor of Women’s Studies in India: A Reader, and Contested Transformations: Changing Economies and Identities in Contemporary India (with Praveen Jha and Surinder Jodhka)

Date: Monday, October 19, 2009
Time: 4:00 pm

Location:
IRWaG Seminar Room
7th Floor, Schermerhorn Extension

A reception will follow

“Gender and the Global Locations of Liberalism” is undertaken in conjunction with “Liberalism and Its Others,” a project supported by CCASD during 2009-2011

Visit IRWaG for more information.