Saturday, April 12, 2014 (09:00 am - 6:00 pm)
Knox Hall 509, Columbia University
(This event is co-sponsored by South Asia Institute, Teachers College Vice President’s Diversity and Community Initiatives Grant Fund, TC Student Senate and TC Student Development and Activities.)
Empowerment or the will to strengthen the capacities of self or others is, according to Barbara Cruikshank, neither good nor bad, it is political. This conference endeavors to engage with this political enterprise to provide analysis of the current state of women's and girls' empowerment.
International organizations, state governments, the private sector, academia and popular culture are invested in girls’ and women's empowerment. However, girls’ and women’s empowerment in South Asia is a much celebrated yet inadequately examined issue. This conference will reflect on the nature of empowerment programs and will critically examine the promise of empowerment as the solution to a wide array of social, economic and cultural problems. Critical dialogues will seek to engage with and complicate dominant conceptions of girls’ and women's empowerment in South Asia and its Diaspora and the ways in which they construct the lives of girls and women.
We welcome abstracts that address the following topics:
Ø Theorizing empowerment: approaches and criticism
Ø Empowerment and Schooling
Ø Empowerment as a strategy of development
Ø Empowerment and feminism
Ø Empowerment and affective connections
Abstracts that explore other issues related to the conference theme are also encouraged.
Abstracts of 250 words should be submitted by March 20, 2014. Email:disha@tc.columbia.edu
For more information click here