[Reader-list] Fwd: talk

[mahmood farooqui]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Geeta Patel <geeta.patel at verizon.net>
Date: 07-Jul-2007 13:50
Subject: talk
To: mahmood farooqui <mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com>, Geeta Patel
<geeta.patel at verizon.net>, "S. K. Bharathi"
<bharathi at fulbright-india.org>, Akhil Katyal <akhilkatyal at gmail.com>,
Shohini Ghosh <shohini at vsnl.com>, Dhruv Sangari <dsangari at gmail.com>,
Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri <jyotirmoy.chaudhuri at gmail.com>, Anindyo Roy
<aroy at colby.edu>, Prabhu Mohapatra <prabhuayan at gmail.com>


Please foward:

Talk by Dr. Geeta Patel

In honor of her mother who has recently passed away

"Reading longing, Reading Miraji: An Introduction to the Poet"

The poet Miraji (Sana ullah Daar) lived from 1912-1949. A compatriot of
N.M. Rashid and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Miraji like them was responsible for
transforming Urdu poetics and critical writing. Widely heralded as one
of the early founders of Urdu poetic modernism, Miraji is also known for
his explicitly sexual lyric written in conversation with the Urdu
Progressive Writers Association. This talk, an introduction to Miraji,
will address the subtleties and complexities of his lyrical oeuvre.
Using Miraji's own theoretical categories, the talk will also analyze
the relationships between sexuality, mysticism, reading and politics.

Sarai-CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, N Delhi-54 at
Wednesday 4 pm, 11 July.

Geeta Patel is an Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Co-director
of the South Asia Studies Program at Wellesley College. Her book from
Stanford University Press, /lyrical movements, historical hauntings:
gender, colonialism and desire in Miraji's Urdu poetry/, reads a
renegade writer through nationalism gender, sexuality, and grief in
twentieth century Urdu poetic movements. Her work, circling around prose
and poetry in Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi, Braj and Awadhi, includes
translation and short personal pieces. Her theoretical stance, informed
by translation theory from South Asian studies, sexuality studies and
gender theory, postcolonial, diaspora and subaltern historiography, and
crossover questions from the history of science, is fashioned in her
most recent manuscript /Gendering the Global Nation/. Her current
project, /Financing Selves, /on risk, insurance and pensions in South
Asia opens with the early East India Company archives and closes with
labor movements in contemporary Sri Lanka.