Upcoming Events

InterAsian Intimacies across Race, Religion, and Colonialism
Chie Ikeya will discuss her research in transnational histories of Asian mobility and intimacy in the era of European colonial empires and her recent book, InterAsian Intimacies across Race, Religion, and Colonialism (Cornell University Press, 2024). Challenging the Eurocentrism of postcolonial studies that remains preoccupied with Eurasian encounters and the European management of race, sex, and desire, Ikeya uncovers an obscured history of intimacy and estrangement between indigenous people and Asian migrants. She will discuss how profoundly these “South-South,” interAsian interactions shaped modern understandings of identity and belonging that continue to vex Southeast Asian nations today.

McMillan Stewart Lecture Series: The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and the Making of Iranian Modernity
Please join Prof. Houri Berberian and Prof. Talinn Grigor, where they offer the first history of Armenian women in modern Iran.

Love Across Difference: Mixed Marriage in Lebanon w/ Prof. Laura Deeb
Intersectarian and interreligious marriages often provoke strong opposition from Lebanese of all sects and faiths. In this talk, Prof. Lara Deeb will introduce her new book, Love Across Difference: Mixed Marriage in Lebanon.

Feminist Security Studies: Collectively Building Theory and Practices about Security in the Americas
In this panel, Priscyll Anctil, Alessandra Jungs de Almeida, and J.C.D. Calderón panel will explore the main theoretical, epistemological, and methodological contributions of these edited volumes, emphasizing their main contributions, including how they contest andro-anglo-centered knowledge production and expand the concept of feminist security. For questions, email wgs@mit.edu

Articulating Abortion Lecture Series: “Russia’s Pursuit of Repopulation: Abortion, Large Families, and Propaganda” Lecture by Prof. Mie Nakachi
The lecture will take place at Harvard. Through a comparative analysis of the 1944 pronatalist Family Law and Putin’s pronatalist measures, this talk attempts to identify both constant and shifting choices as well as forces that affect the politics of reproduction today. In addition to policymakers, the talk will address the roles of women, doctors, and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Alice Rothchild: "Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician" Book Talk
Please join us in this book talk with Alice Rothchild. “Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician” tells the story of Alice Rothchild's journey from 1950's good girl to irreverent, feisty, feminist obstetrician-gynecologist forging her own direction in the contradictory, sexist world of medicine.

Yekaterina Bahaturian: Writing Feminist Prose in the South Caucasus under the Tsarist and Soviet Regimes
This talk presents ongoing research on the life and work of Yekaterina Bahaturian (1870-1944) who grew up in Shushi, then a provincial center of the Russian Empire.
Lunch will be provided

“Nehru's men: Masculinity, modernity and worldliness in an Indian industrial township”
Join us in hearing about Prof. Mathangi Krishnamurthy in their examination of the primacy of a particular kind of work that produced the world and worldliness, for a set of men in the 1970s, 80s and 90s in an India navigating the move from socialism to neoliberalism.
Lunch will be provided

On the Coloniality of Abortion Bans
In this lecture, Prof. Durba Mitra (Harvard University, WGS) will reflect on the history of abortion in South Asia and the legacies of racism and sexual control rooted in colonialism that shape present-day debates about reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

Language and Education in Jerusalem: Palestinian Women between the Seamline and Neoliberalism
Lecture by Camelia Suliman, Michigan State University