Seminar on
Sexuality and Society in India
At
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDY, SHIMLA
(16-17 September 2014)
CONCEPT NOTE
The workshop will bring together a group of established and younger scholars to explore the variety of social and cultural meanings that gather around the term ‘sexuality’. It proposes to move away from discourses around sexuality that derive either from biological reasoning or from historical projects that make a direct connection between the Kama Sutra and contemporary Indian life. As an idea, biologism essentially argues that identities derive from a ‘deep source’ within the self: hence the notion, that we express our gendered and sexual selves, rather thanenact it. ‘Enactment’ gestures at ideas of learning and performing, whereas ‘expressing’ embodies the notion of an essence that, not withstanding other factors, will come to the fore and ultimately reveal itself. Further, a significant consequence of thinking about ‘sexuality’ as a world-unto-itself is that it tends to be simultaneously thought of as a very narrowly confined domain (with little to do with other spheres such as, for example, politics and economics) as well as something that is of very general significance and absolutely fundamental to the ‘truth’ of our being. Furthermore, because it is usually thought of as a truth – with ‘truths’ often being imagined as fixed and unchanging – sexual identity comes to be seen as fixed, unchanging and biologically given. While sexuality has been significant to the making of a wider public world, its role in certainsocial fields has simultaneously been downplayed through its treatment as an inner and private matter.
The workshop seeks to position sexualities within a wide range of changing social, cultural and political contexts so as to better understand its shifting and unstable meanings.
Some of the themes and issues that can be explored are:
- Understanding sexuality through historical time
- Caste, class and cultures of sexuality
- Sexuality in music, media and popular culture
- Consumer cultures and sexual cultures
- Sexuality and ‘youth culture’
- Sexuality in Indian literature: ancient to modern
- Sexuality and regional cultures
- The family and sexuality
- Sexuality, NGOs and the law
- Non-heteronormative sexualities
Among other things, the workshop seeks to explore relationships between the ‘mainstream’ and its others, in order that we might problematise the making of sexual norms. If cultures of sexuality are to be seen for what they are – unstable, contested, and in flux – then it is important to juxtapose different kinds of sexual claims. What are the contexts for the emergence of discourses – rights based, legal, cultural etc. – of non-heterosexual cultures India? What is the relationship between different forms of urban politics and LGBTI issues? It becomes important, then, to explore why it is that we talk about sexuality at this moment in time in the ways that we do. And further, why are histories of sexuality important to the present?
This interdisciplinary seminar encourages contributions from scholars from different disciplines working across a range of contexts, utilizing diverse methodologies to understand the contested field of sexualities. It seeks to build the grounds for an understanding of sexuality in India over the long term and also of its relationship with modernity in its different aspects.
A limited number of participants will be invited for the seminar. Those intrested in participating should send a synopsis (700 words) of the proposed paper to following Email ID’s :-
- aroiias@gmail.com
- sanjays3050@gmail.com
Please click here for more details…
Call for Papers for the Seminar on “Sexuality and Society in India”.
A limited number of participants will be invited for the seminar. Those interested in participating should send a synopsis (700 words) of the proposed paper along with their C.V. and a covering letter latest by 30 June 2014 to both the address mentioned below:
1. Academic Resource Officer,
Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla – 171005.
Email: aroiias@gmail.com
2. Professor Sanjay Srivastava,
Institute of Economic Growth,
Delhi University, Delhi 110007.
Email: sanjays3050@gmail.com
It is the policy of the Institute to publish the proceedings of the seminars it organizes. Therefore, the invited participants will be expected to submit complete papers to the Academic Resource Officer, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla – 171005 at least one week before the seminar.
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