24 Septrember 2009

Professor Veena Das was the keynote speaker at the Inaugural Asia Lecture, held on Thursday, 24 September 2009 at York University. The lecture was one of the events featured in YCAR's U50 'Asian Transformations' event series. Professor Das spoke on 'Poverty and the Imagination of a Future: The Story of Urban Slums in Delhi, India'.

Veena Das is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. She is one of the most well known social theorists specializing on South Asia today. She is particularly known for her research on the anthropology of violence, social suffering and the state in South Asia. Amongst her many works are Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (California UP, 2006), Critical Events: An Anthropological Approach to Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 1995); Structure and Cognition: Aspects of Hindu Caste and Ritual (Oxford University Press, 1977), and the edited and co-edited volumes Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia (Oxford UP, 1990), Social Suffering (California UP, 1998); Violence and Subjectivity (California UP, 2000). Professor Das received the Anders Retzius Gold Medal from the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography in 1995 and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Chicago in 2000. She is an Honourary Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Thank you to the York U50 committee for their support of the event. Photographs by F. Caballero
Asian Transformations webpage  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lt-Rt: Michael Nijhawan, Susan Henders, Mrs. Singer, Dr. Martin Singer and Veena Das.