South Asian Identity Week 2009
Posted by Akshay Rathod on November 25, 2009
Last week marked South Asian Identity Week 2009. As co-director alongside Meara Sharma '10.5, I'm proud to say our week was extremely successful and thought-provoking. Our week of events worked towards exploring the complexities of the South Asian identity in the 21st century.
Let me share with you the thinking process behind our week of events. As Homi Bhabha mentions in The Location of Culture: “The 'beyond' is neither a new horizon, nor a leaving behind of the past.... Beginnings and endings may be the sustaining myths of the middle years; but in the fin de siècle, we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion.” This “moment of transit” is what this year’s South Asian Identity Week’s theme, "Earth Unbound," strives to unpack.
Some of the notable events:
For the event "A Change of Heart," we assembled a group of artists to present a performance and panel discussion on queer South Asian performance poetry. The event brought together performance poets from India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. They explored issues of sexuality, transgenderedness, family, politics, and history through the lens of the queer South Asian experience, an identity that is often not discussed openly in South Asian communities.
We had a Brown faculty panel entitled “South Asia Rising.” The professors on the panel were Professor Ashutosh Varshney, Patrick Heller, Shayoni Mitra, and Vasuki Nesiah. Professor Meera Viswanathan moderated. We asked, is South Asia rising? Is it rising as a whole? Or in parts? How should we define “rise”: by GDP per capita? Political freedoms? Military strength? Cultural empowerment? Happiness? What are the major variables challenging each South Asian country’s prosperity? With a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds, this panel of Brown professors unpacked and explored these questions and sparked insightful discussion, debate, answers, and more questions about South Asia’s future.
On our final day, we were privileged to bring Rekha Malhotra--DJ Rekha. Rekha Malhotra is an accomplished and critically acclaimed DJ, artist, music producer, and activist. She has been credited with putting bhangra music on the map in the US. She is the creator and host of Basement Bhangra, New York City's popular dance party at Sounds of Brazil. She gave a lecture on the history of bhangra and later that evening, she played to a packed audience at Graduate Center Lounge.
All in all, it was a great week!
