Third World Feminism and the Crisis of Authoritarianism

This talk offers a glimpse into the vast intellectual history of Third World feminisms in the decolonizing world in the 1970s and 1980s. I critically engage the possibilities and limits of the feminist epistemological revolution that emerged in the dark shadow of an earlier era of utopian internationalism, globalism, and non-alignment of the 1950s and 1960s. Third World feminists created a new internationalist imaginary in response to widespread disenchantment in the decolonizing world with the nationalist project and rising neocolonial governments bolstered by economic and military interventions. Women seized the means of knowledge production, critiquing postcolonial inequality and rising authoritarianisms by imagining radically just visions of the future.  

Speaker Bio: 
Durba Mitra is Associate Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University and author of Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020). Mitra works on the history of sexuality and epistemology in South Asia and the comparative colonial and post-colonial world. Mitra’s current book project, The Future That Was: Feminist Thought in the Decolonizing World,  analyzes the history of Third World feminist thought and South-South solidarity networks. 

Lunch will be provided at the talk, so please RSVP via this link by 09/28 so we can anticipate lunch orders and take on board your dietary preferences. 

This event is presented by the Global South Gender and Sexuality Studies Collective, Women's and Gender Studies Department, and IRWG.

Save the dates for more events in the Global South Gender and Sexuality Collective Speaker Series:

Durba Mitra (Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Harvard University)
Third World Feminism and the Crisis of Authoritarianism
Friday, October 6, 2023 / 12-1:30 pm / 2239 Lane Hall

Raevin Jimenez (History, University of Michigan)
Gendered Mutualism in Southeast Africa: Personhood and Society in Deep-time Historical Perspective
Monday, November 20, 2023 / 12-1:30 pm / 2239 Lane Hall

Evren Savcı (Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University)
Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam
Friday, January 26, 2024 / 12-1:30 pm / 2239 Lane Hall

Yun Zhou (Sociology, University of Michigan)
Riding the Leviathan: Gender, Fertility, and Selfhood in Autocratic China
Friday, March 29, 2024 / 12-1:30 pm / 2239 Lane Hall