"Suspicious Centerings: Third World Women, the Rhetoric of Rights and the Politics of Rescue and Empowerment"

Thursday, April 2, 2009

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Uma Narayan is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. She is the author of Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Women and has co-edited several feminist anthologies. She is now working on a book that addresses various problematic economic aspects of contemporary globalization.

Abstract:

   The feminist injunction to put the problems of poor and marginalized women at the center of analysis has been arguably co-opted by some disturbing contemporary agendas, and such agendas will be the focus of Professor Narayan's talk. Professor Narayan will examine two distinct phenomena-- the movements in various countries to "rescue" Muslim women from the veil and the enthusiasm for economically empowering Third World women through microcredit. She will talk about how the rhetoric of rights functions to obscure various deeply problematic aspects of these "suspicious centerings."

Location:

  Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Building

  162 Ryders Lane, Douglass Campus

  Reception at 4:00

  Lecture at 4:30