CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Venue Information
Events at this Venue
Property, Power, and Women: Positive and Perverse Consequences of Indian Reforms for Gender Equality
START
Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 02:30pm
END
Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 04:00pm
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Can political representation help women upend entrenched systems of power? Property and Power, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, finds evidence that quotas improve women’s ability to claim fundamental economic rights. Yet, greater voice is costly, and whether women experience benefits or backlash will depend on individual bargaining power at the time a woman is elected.
Speaker:
Rachel Brulé, Assistant Professor of Global Development Policy, Boston University
Moderator:
Emmerich Davies, Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Tools for Urban Conservation in Lucknow: Advocacy, Politics, and Civic Engagement
START
Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 06:00pm
END
Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 07:30pm
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Urban conservation is often a pressing challenge in historic Indian cities experiencing the pressures of development. Many cities, often lacking any viable local-level policy and enforcement, have resorted to alternative tools, often citizen-led, to accomplish the goal of conservation. This seminar will explore the tools of advocacy, politics, and civic engagement through recent examples from the city of Lucknow in northern India.
The Fears Have Gone Away: Exploring the Roots of Insurgent Citizenship in India’s Bhil Heartland
START
Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 06:00pm
END
Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 07:30pm
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
In India, subaltern groups must resort to the universalizing vocabulary of citizenship in order to stake claims for redistribution and recognition. But on what basis do they do this — especially under severe coercion? Alf Nilsen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pretoria, will explore this question by investigating movement patterns in the Bhil heartland of western India, where Adivasi communities have organized and mobilized against the tyranny of the local state.
De Facto Suffrage: A Field Experiment to Improve Women’s Turnout in Pakistan’s General Elections
START
Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 02:00pm
END
Fri, Apr 12, 2019
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
JOINT SEMINAR ON SOUTH ASIAN POLITICS SERIES
Sarah Khan, Postgraduate Associate, Yale MacMillan Center
Sarah Khan is a postgraduate associate at the Yale MacMillan Center. Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender and comparative politics, with a regional specialization in South Asia. In her work, she explores gender gaps in political preferences, and the barriers to women’s participation and substantive representation in Pakistan. Additionally, she explores questions related to the prevention of violence against women. Her research has been generously supported by grants from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, the Abdul Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) Governance Initiative, and the National Science Foundation.
Khan has worked with Ali Cheema, Shandana Mohmand, and Asad Liaqat to research potential pathways to increasing women’s voter registration and turnout in Pakistan, culminating in a paper entitled “Exercising Her Right: Civic and Political Action as Pathways for Increasing Women’s Turnout in Pakistan.” According to the team, “there is a large and persistent gender gap in voter registration and turnout in Pakistan, making for a heavily male-skewed electorate in all levels of Pakistani elections. This has implications both for the quality of democracy, and for women’s substantive representation in politics.”
Production of City Space in India: Class, Caste, and Grayness
START
Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 06:00pm
END
Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 07:30pm
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Sripad Motiram, Associate Professor of Economics and Affiliated Faculty, Asian Studies Department, University of Massachusetts Boston
Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Co-Director, Asian Political Economy Program (Political Economy Research Institute) and Associate Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Sripad Motiram and Vamsi Vakulabharanam will discuss how space is structured in two Indian cities, Hyderabad and Mumbai, along the axes of class and caste. By grouping individuals into classes, castes, and spatial units, they will show that these factors are all independently important in making sense of inequality. Together, they document high (relative to US cities) spatial co-existence — which they call “Grayness” — of groups, and will demonstrate its positive role in achieving development outcomes, arguing that the neoliberal restructuring of cities is eroding it.
Sri Lankan Narrations and Building Schemes by Minnette de Silva
START
Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 06:00pm
END
Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 07:30pm
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
In her building and writing, architect Minnette de Silva sought to recreate a “felicitous community spirit” across social and cultural differences, as stated in her memoir — a text on the significant multi-family housing project her office undertook. In this event, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Assistant Professor of the Department of Architecture at Columbia University, will perform a critical examination of de Silva’s work. Siddiqi will discuss the claims de Silva sought to incorporate into modern architecture for Ceylon, and her labors as a cultural narrator imagining a heritage at the end of a half-century career.
Urbanization Seminar: Mrinalini Rajagopalan
START
Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 06:00pm
END
Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 07:30pm
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Mrinalini Rajagopalan, Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor, Department of History of Art & Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, is a historian of India’s built environment and is particularly interested in the impact of colonialism and nationalism on the architectural, urban, and preservation cultures of modern South Asia. Her first monograph Building Histories: The Archival and Affective Lives of Five Monuments in Modern Delhi (University of Chicago Press, 2016) traces the modern lives of five medieval monuments in India’s capital city, Delhi, and brings attention to their contested histories, unexpected uses, and ideological appropriations by state and non-state actors. This book received the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians in 2018.
She is currently developing two new research projects. The first traces the built works of Begum Samru—a wealthy dowager who rose from modest beginnings as a dancing girl to become the independent ruler of a prosperous territory in nineteenth-century North India. The second, and more ambitious project, investigates the various architectural products built, commissioned, and patronized by the Tata Corporation during India’s long twentieth-century transformation from a European colony to a socialist nation and most recently to an economically-liberal state eager to participate in global markets.
Transcultural Attractions: American Photographs of an Indian Dancer
START
Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 04:30pm
END
Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 06:00pm
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
AJAY SINHA, Professor of Art History, Mount Holyoke College
Chair: JINAH KIM, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture and Faculty Director, Arts @ Mittal Institute
In the Spring of 1938, an Indian dancer, Ram Gopal, posed in a variety of fantastical costumes for the American photographer, Carl Van Vechten, in New York City. Studying over 100 large-size photographs resulting from the photoshoot, the lecture builds an illustrated story of their mutual fascination and exchange, triggered by the camera. The remarkable images, now part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University, show traces of the myriad, transcultural relations being performed during the photoshoot. They reveal an interplay of differing investments in the image when we ask: What does the Indian dancer show the camera; what does the American photographer see through his lens? Their visual exploration helps us elaborate on an underrepresented history of exchanges between the cultural worlds of India and the U.S. in early-20th century.
Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics: Deliberative Inequality: A Text-As-Data Study of Tamil Nadu’s Village Assemblies
START
Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 02:00pm
END
Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 04:00pm
VENUE
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
ADDRESS
CGIS South, S153
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Join Vijayendra Rao in a seminar discussing his paper “Deliberative Inequality: A Text-As-Data Analysis of Indian Village Assemblies” (Co-authored with R. Parthasarathy and N. Palaniswamy).
Vijayendra (Biju) Rao, a Lead Economist in the Research Department of the World Bank, integrates his training in economics with theories and methods from anthropology, sociology and political science to study the social, cultural, and political context of extreme poverty in developing countries.
He leads the Social Observatory, an inter-disciplinary effort to improve the conversation between citizens and governments. It does this – first – by improving the quality of civic action by strengthening forums for deliberation and developing tools to facilitate collective action, and – second – by building the “adaptive capacity” of large-scale anti-poverty projects; i.e. the ability of projects to make everyday decisions, and modify project design, on the basis of high-quality descriptive, evaluative and process-oriented information.
His research has spanned a wide variety of subjects including participatory development, deliberative democracy, the rise in dowries in India, the determinants and consequences of domestic violence, the economics of sex work, public celebrations, and culture and development policy.
The paper he will be discussing during this seminar can be accessed here.