Knowledge, Movement, Justice: Academic knowledges and people's struggles
Professor Nagar will share insights from her academic life and read parts of her new book, Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability, which focuses on her work with three communities — the Sangtin movement of small farmers and manual labourers in rural North India; the Parakh theatre group in Mumbai; and her undergraduate and graduate students.
Description
Traditional academic research — with its narrow disciplinary specialization and its exclusive languages — is often described as akin to living in an ivory tower, removed from and immune to the reality of lived experience. Few academics have done more to open their work up to the world than Professor Richa Nagar (University of Minnesota), who has grounded her academic research in the political struggles and experiences of activist and artistic communities. With the help of these partners, she has evolved a complex language and research style that makes room for poems, diaries, songs, plays and stories alongside formal academic writing.