[Reader-list] on the space of women's hostel

[sadan]

Responding Shefali's posting,

shefali the psoting sounds interesting. would you kindly write a more on the 
nature of sources that you are looking for the construction of the history of 
this space of women's hostel. What kinds of documents are you looking at? I 
hope you are not exploring the historical construction of this space not 
merely in terms of positivist understandings of the history. I also hope that 
you would be analysing the question of locality and neighbourhood while doing 
field work. But tell me are you also looking at how different people who have 
been part of this space visualise this space. Issues of male gaze, sexuality 
and the fear/pleasure that this gaze generates make this space of women's 
hostel as a site of contestation too. I hope you are keeping an eye over some 
of the issues of various scopic regimes that this urban space 
enjoys/resists...
If you are  interested in hindi literature I suggest you to kindly read a 
recent story of Sitakshi Singh on the universe of a girls hostel. It came in 
Hans few months ago. If you are interested i can send you the exact 
reference.
cheers
sadan.

 3 12:39 am, shefali jha wrote:
> Hello.
>
> As part of our project on Women's hostels as urban spaces in Hyderabad,we
> have spent the past month doing research into the history of the Women's
> hostel at Osmania University,which is one of our case-studies,the other
> being the CIEFL (Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages)women's
> hostel.We have been looking at general histories of Hyderabad and documents
> relating to the hostels,dealing with their establishment,architecture,rules
> etc.Most of this has happened through spending long hors in the University
> Library.
> The other aspect of our work has been talking to people,and this is in
> keeping with the general approach we intend to adopt,combining research
> with interviews,personal narratives etc.We have spoken to a few
> 'old-timers' at CIEFL and hope to get discussions and exhaustive interview
> sessions going.We have also met some of the faculty at Osmania
> University,who have been of great help in leading us to possible candidates
> for interaction,that is,their students.
> The next month will be spent building on these slender leads and basically
> talking to different women in an effort to achieve some sort of a grounding
> in their experience of hostel-life and how it relates to their experience
> of the city.These women come from diverse backgrounds and it will be
> interesting to see how they locate themselves in relation to the
> hostel-space,and how this space changes with their interaction.
>
> Shefali & Navaneetha, Hyderabad.
>
>
>
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