The ASAPA DeCal returns this week with Anthropology Professor Lawrence Cohen as our guest speaker. The topic of the class will primarily be "Queer South Asians." For more information on Professor Cohen, you can see his departmental website here.
We have one article for you all to read this week, which will provide you with some background on the topic to be discussed. It is entitled "Indian Gays Step Out" and was written by Kavita Chhibber Narula. It is available here.
Also, for those of you with Facebook accounts, check out this Facebook group called "Queer and Trans Desis (South Asians)," which offers some surprisingly informative links and also serves as one of the few (online) communities of queer South Asians.
Come prepared to actively engage in the lecture and ask questions!
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Readings for the Second Week--9/18 Class
On September 18, Bharat Venkat, a UC Berkeley doctoral Anthropology student will come to class to speak on the topic of "AIDS Politics." Below are some introductory readings on AIDS in South Asia. Please read them and come up with some questions for class:
1) "On India's Roads, Cargo and a Deadly Passenger"
"NELAMANGALA, India - Hot water: 10 rupees. Cold water: 8 rupees. Toilet: 5 rupees. Sex: no price specified on the bathhouse wall, but, as the condom painted there suggests, safe. Sangeetha Hamam, a bathhouse, sits on the national highway near this gritty truck stop about nine miles north of Bangalore. Its mistress is Ranjeetha, a 28-year-old eunuch who lives as a woman. Her lipstick and black dress provide a touch of glamour in the small dark shack.
Her clients are not only truckers, but also Bangalore college students and other city residents. They know to look for sex at highway establishments geared toward truckers. Her customers - as many as 100 on Sundays for her and five other eunuchs - come for a "massage" and the anal sex that follows, but also for the anonymity the location confers."
From The New York Times. Click here for full text. This article comes from a series on India's booming highway construction that you should all look at.
2) "When Silence Kills"
"India's AIDS crisis is huge and growing, but both its government and wider society have yet to acknowledge the scale of the problem. The first step: get honest about sex..."
From Time Asia. For full text, click here
3) Link to United Nations Development Programme Website, which has a wealth of information regarding AIDS in India. If any reports or articles on the site interest you, feel free to bring them up in class for discussion.
1) "On India's Roads, Cargo and a Deadly Passenger"
"NELAMANGALA, India - Hot water: 10 rupees. Cold water: 8 rupees. Toilet: 5 rupees. Sex: no price specified on the bathhouse wall, but, as the condom painted there suggests, safe. Sangeetha Hamam, a bathhouse, sits on the national highway near this gritty truck stop about nine miles north of Bangalore. Its mistress is Ranjeetha, a 28-year-old eunuch who lives as a woman. Her lipstick and black dress provide a touch of glamour in the small dark shack.
Her clients are not only truckers, but also Bangalore college students and other city residents. They know to look for sex at highway establishments geared toward truckers. Her customers - as many as 100 on Sundays for her and five other eunuchs - come for a "massage" and the anal sex that follows, but also for the anonymity the location confers."
From The New York Times. Click here for full text. This article comes from a series on India's booming highway construction that you should all look at.
2) "When Silence Kills"
"India's AIDS crisis is huge and growing, but both its government and wider society have yet to acknowledge the scale of the problem. The first step: get honest about sex..."
From Time Asia. For full text, click here
3) Link to United Nations Development Programme Website, which has a wealth of information regarding AIDS in India. If any reports or articles on the site interest you, feel free to bring them up in class for discussion.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Readings for the First Week--9/11 Class
1) "A Policy Out of Control: Sikh's Turban Removed in Public and Placed Through Airport X-Ray Scanner"
"(San Francisco, California) September 5, 2007 – Screeners at San Francisco International Airport recently forced a Sikh man to remove his turban in public, place it in a bin, and then ran it through an x-ray machine last week, providing another example of how the Transportation Security Administration’s new screening policies do not keep America safe. The Sikh Coalition, the nation's largest Sikh civil rights organization, remains concerned that the TSA’s hastily-conceived headwear search policy endangers all Americans by focusing critical security resources on non-existent threats."
From The Sikh Coalition. For full text, click here.
2) "Turban Searches Rile Sikh Community"
"Like all practicing Sikhs, Gurpreet Singh Tuteja wears his turban as a sacred symbol of his faith and its values of discipline and austerity. Every morning, the Arlington County business consultant winds a long bolt of black or saffron cloth tightly around his uncut hair, where it remains until he returns home. He has worn the turban on hundreds of business trips, without incident...."
From The Washington Post. For full text, click here.
3) Article from The Karma of Brown Folk, a novel by Vijay Prashad that attacks the mythical image of South Asians as the "model minority." For full text, click here.
"(San Francisco, California) September 5, 2007 – Screeners at San Francisco International Airport recently forced a Sikh man to remove his turban in public, place it in a bin, and then ran it through an x-ray machine last week, providing another example of how the Transportation Security Administration’s new screening policies do not keep America safe. The Sikh Coalition, the nation's largest Sikh civil rights organization, remains concerned that the TSA’s hastily-conceived headwear search policy endangers all Americans by focusing critical security resources on non-existent threats."
From The Sikh Coalition. For full text, click here.
2) "Turban Searches Rile Sikh Community"
"Like all practicing Sikhs, Gurpreet Singh Tuteja wears his turban as a sacred symbol of his faith and its values of discipline and austerity. Every morning, the Arlington County business consultant winds a long bolt of black or saffron cloth tightly around his uncut hair, where it remains until he returns home. He has worn the turban on hundreds of business trips, without incident...."
From The Washington Post. For full text, click here.
3) Article from The Karma of Brown Folk, a novel by Vijay Prashad that attacks the mythical image of South Asians as the "model minority." For full text, click here.
Welcome!
Welcome to the blog for the ASAPA DeCal class, where you can find out information related the course, including readings and discussion forums! Stay tuned for more!
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