4PM / HBL - Class of 1947 Room
“EUGENIC FEMINISM”
ASHA NADKARNI, University of Massachusetts / Amherst
Sponsored by Asian / Asian American Studies Institute and WGSS in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Associate Professor of English at UMass – Amherst, ASHA NADKARNI will give a lecture/presentation based on her most recently published book, Eugenic Feminism: Reproductive Nationalism in the United States & India (University of Minnesota Press).
Nadkarni’s book explores the idea that whenever feminists lay claim to citizenship based on women’s biological ability to “reproduce the nation,” they are participating in a eugenic project—sanctioning reproduction by some, and prohibiting it by others.
She shows how the exclusionary impulse of eugenics – that is, improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics – is embedded within the terms of nationalist feminism.
Professor Nadkarni received her B.A. in gender and women’s studies from Connecticut College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Brown University. Her research and teaching interests include postcolonial literature and theory, transnational feminist theory, American empire studies, and Asian American studies, with an emphasis on the literatures and cultures of the South Asian Diaspora.
This event is open to the public.
For more information, contact: Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu