Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities (JSLH) is the fifth school of O. P. Jindal Global University and is at the center of its vibrant intellectual life. The school provides an interdisciplinary liberal arts education of a global standard.

The talk aims to look at how questions of gender and sexuality have been framed in the language of jurisprudence in India, and how feminist legal jurisprudence has emerged, evolved, and impacted the larger jurisprudence discourse. By looking at some landmark judgements and jurisprudence debates, the talk will touch upon same-sex relationships, trans-rights, marriage, property, domestic violence, and sexual harassment laws which have had strong influences on the way legal activism and scholarship has been shaped in India.

It will also shed light on the exercise of writing about these concepts, with Ismat Chughtai's most controversial story, Lihaaf, as an example to show how writing about gender and sexuality has always posed a threat to some of the most regressive ideas that the Indian state and its legal system is founded upon.

About the Speaker

Debdatta Chowdhury is Assistant Professor, Gender Studies at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Her research interests include gender and legal jurisprudence, border studies, partition, and migration studies. Her book, titled Identities and Experiences at the India-Bangladesh Border: A Crisis of Belonging (Routledge, 2018) dealt with border narratives in the context of livelihood practices, caste and ethno-religious subjectivities, gendered practices, and geo-spatial identity markers.

Date: 24th March, 2021

Time: 02:00 PM to 03:30 PM

Place: Zoom Link - https://zoom.us/j/98328633671, Password - JGU

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