Embodied Belongings Symposium: Exploring the Politics of “Queer” in South Asia

The South Asia Center is pleased to announce that it will hold a symposium titled “Embodied Belongings: Exploring the Politics of ‘Queer’ in South Asia on October 5 and 6.

The Symposium will kick off at 7pm on Thursday, October 5, with Toronto-based artist, Vivek Shraya’s multi-media performance. She will show and discuss a range of her work -- literature, song and film -- to highlight the complex relationship between belonging and the body itself.  Her work consistently tackles what it means to belong (and not belong) in relation to family, religion, community spaces, queerness and transness.

The second day of the symposium will open up with a keynote address on “With Respect to Sex, Revisited” by Professor Gayatru Reddy, a sociocultural anthropologist whose interests lie at the intersections of sexuality, gender, health, and the politics of subject and community-formation in India. Following the keynote, there will be three panels exploring the politics, cultures, and arts of queer communities in South Asia. The Symposium will conclude with a reading by Shyam Selvadurai, an award-winning author from Sri Lanka. His novel Funny Boy draws on his experience of being gay in the violent 1980s of Sri Lanka.

This symposium has been made possible by support from: the Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center grant, the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, the College of Arts and Sciences Ray Smith Symposium and the Humanities Center. We have also received co-sponsorships from the Departments of Anthropology, Religion, Women’s Studies, English, Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition, the LGBTQ Program and the Ford Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies.

All events are free and open to the public. Light breakfast, lunch, and coffee breaks will be provided. There is no need to register. Please see our website: https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/queersouthasia for additional details.