CENTRE FOR WOMEN’S STUDIES, JNU
Invites you to a Seminar on
Destabilising the Sexual: Translating and Transforming Sexology in the Vernacular
by
Charu Gupta
(Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi)
In early twentieth century north India, besides the reformist impulse, erotic consumerism became a part of the growth of print and publishing boom in the vernacular. There was widespread production and commodification of sex writings in Hindi. The problems and possibilities of transmitting, translating and transforming sexology at this time will be examined in this presentation through the writings of Santram BA (1887-1998), a radical Shudra caste reformer, who wrote several articles and books on sex and birth control, including on the one hand, translations of some of the Sanskrit sex classics, and on the other, of Mary Stopes’ writings into Hindi for the first time. Santram’s writing not only contribute in creating an archive for the study of sexual sciences in India, they also help in addressing the vernacular as a significant, if ambivalent, site for reproduction and contestation around matters of sex. The vernacular became a means that offered a discursive space of thinking and argumentation, combining sex, desire, eroticism and science in indigenous ways. Utilizing repertoires of representation and circuits of production, the presentation argues that Santram created spatial-intimate spaces to celebrated sexual relationships, not only conjoining the private-public, but also opening up an ancillary terrain of textures of touch and sexuality and registers of transgressive sexual norms.
Date: 28th August 2018, Tuesday, Time: 3.30 PM to 5.30 PM
Venue: CHS, Committee Room No.326, Third Floor, SSS-3
All Are Welcome