Oct 12, 2022Mapping Sexuality in India: Insights from the CSGS ProjectHow do we make sense of the vast field of gender and sexuality studies in India? Do we look for it in the realm of academia or activism, institutions or associations, pedagogies or policies, publications or protests, movements or media? …Gender5 min readGender5 min read
Dec 2, 2021Umrao JaanAyesha Verma The pulsating drums set the rhythm of the music, the plaintiff flute began the elusive strain, and the Sitar carried the melody in soft tones…Whirling and swaying Jasmina wove her spell on twinkling feet, her arms and hands fluent with the eloquence of her theme. Her dance began…Umrao Jaan5 min readUmrao Jaan5 min read
Dec 1, 2021Teaching Pleasure: Notes from the Classroomby Rahul Sen I In the penultimate chapter of Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes that “professors rarely speak of the place of eros or the erotic in our classrooms. Trained in the philosophical context of Western metaphysical dualism, many of us have accepted the notion that there is a…Classroom7 min readClassroom7 min read
Nov 16, 2021Studying Political Resistance from a Feminist Perspectiveby Samreen Mushtaq In the last class I taught as part of the ‘Introduction to Gender and Armed Conflict,’ a module that CSGS offered in the later part of 2020, we watched together — virtually — a documentary titled Till Then The Roads Carry Her (2015). Directed by Kashmiri poet…Kashmir6 min readKashmir6 min read
Jul 23, 2020What we don’t talk about when we don’t talk about loveTranscript of Paromita Vohra’s keynote speech at Governing Intimacies Research Meeting (India International Centre, Sept 2019) “Thank you for that nice introduction. So I’m going to talk a little bit about this as a kind of a work in progress because I’m going to talk a bit about things…Sex Education21 min readSex Education21 min read
Mar 19, 2020“Women have always been protesting all their lives”by Snigdha Arora “Women have always been protesting all their lives. Did you just wake up?”- Salma Khan, a postgraduate student at Jamia Millia Islamia University in an interview with journalist Neha Dixit. Amidst the COVID-19 outbreak, news about the countrywide protests against CAA-NRC-NPR has taken a backseat. In Delhi…Democracy5 min readDemocracy5 min read
Mar 7, 2020“Kyunki mai bai nahi banna chahti thi” (Because I did not want to become a domestic worker)“Kyunki main bai nahi banna chahti thi” (Because I did not want to become a domestic worker) Women’s Day owes its history to the struggles of working class women in North America and Europe in the early 20th century. Closer home, South Asia has had its own share of workers’…Womens Day7 min readWomens Day7 min read
Nov 27, 2019Besharam Saves the Dayby Shreyashi Sharma The following short story is inspired by the author’s experiences working as a lawyer in the highly patriarchal legal system of the country. …Fiction7 min readFiction7 min read
Oct 10, 2019CSGS Summer Internships, 2019Over the summer of 2019, the Centre offered eight weeks-long internships to twenty undergraduate and postgraduate students. These internships were offered together with faculty members from within Ashoka University and with academics and practitioners from across Delhi-NCR; the interns worked on research projects concerning themes related to gender and sexuality…Gender7 min readGender7 min read
Nov 20, 2018“DoctHer Who?”by Sowmya Vaidyanathan A satirical take on the popular BBC Sci-Fi series Doctor Who. “The Feminists are taking over,” cries Sir Gabriel Gundacker of Vine, in reference to four female ghostbusters. Granted, that was way back in 2016, but the vine seems appropriate in today’s day and age — especially…Science Fiction4 min readScience Fiction4 min read
