RHEA  Centre of Expertise Gender,  Diversity & Intersectionality
is pleased to present

The First Annual Machteld de Metsenaere Lecture

Thursday, December 3, 2015, 5-7 pm
Promotiezaal  (Campus Etterbeek, room D.2.01 in building D)

Carrying as a Feminist Method
by Nirmal Puwar (Goldsmith College)

The body has a memory, and embodied sensibilities shape our research in ways that we yet have to fully understand. This paper unpacks the notion of “carrying” as an embodied set of experiences and influences that bear upon us in the selection or avoidance of research matters. This discussion considers the informative and affective properties of sensibilities that touch our research directions. It is well recognised that we acquire and carry a body of books for company. What is not so easily acknowledged is the small incidents that stay with us and which often unknowingly offer anchorage to our points of attention. Commonly we carry a set of aesthetics which we struggle to give legitimacy. Most often the risks of anthropological romanticism or scientific reductionism constrain our attempts to work with different ways of being, seeing and feeling. This lecture considers the example of Giddha (Punjabi song and dance between women) that provides an instance of embodied transnational carrying of stories, voice and humour. This however is not an exercise in museum preservation or a politics of salvation.

Nirmal Puwar is Reader in Sociology and Co-Director of Methods Lab at Goldsmith College, University of London. Her work explores postcolonialism, institutions, race and gender, and critical methodologies. She is author of the book Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies out of place (2004) and co-editor of eighteen collections, including: Live Methods; Intimacy in Research; Post-colonial Bourdieu; Fashion and Orientalism and South Asian Women in the Diaspora. She is co-convenor of the Race Forum of the British Sociological Association. In her recent work she has collaboratively worked on a number of projects involved with inventive and public methods.

The lecture is followed by a response by Sarah Bracke (RHEA)

Master Class with Nirmal Puwar

Friday, December 4th, 2015
9.30 am – 1 pm, Campus Etterbeek

The Machteld de Metsenaere lecture is followed by a master class, which offers interested graduate students the opportunity to explore the notion of carrying more in depth together with Nirmal Puwar.

The master class is open to doctoral students and advanced MA students. Participation is free of charge, but conditional upon application (see below). Participation to the master class requires attending the public lecture, reading the assigned readings, and preparing a brief (10 minutes) presentation of one’s research project. This presentation should focus on (feminist) methodological issues and embodiment, and might reflect on how an understanding of “carrying” plays out in one’s own research.

PhD students from any Flemish university receive one credit (1 ECTS) upon completion of the master class. Other PhD students receive, on completion, a ‘proof of successful participation’, which can be recognized by their home PhD programme. MA students can apply for registration on an individual basis and receive ‘proof of successful participation’.

How to apply?
Send us a brief statement of interest by October 31, 2015.

The statement should include a presentation of your research, with special emphasis on methodological and epistemological issues, as well as present questions that you would like to see addressed during the master class. The statement should not exceed 1000 words, and should be sent to sarah.bracke@vub.ac.be

You will be notified by November 10 about your participation to the master class. A brief reading list will be available from that date onwards.

The public lecture and master class are sponsored by: Doctoral School for Human Sciences,  Expertisecentrum Gender, Diversiteit & Intersectionaliteit