South Asia Speaker Series: Srila Roy’s “Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India”

In co-sponsorship with Georgetown University’s LGBTQ Resource Center and the Women’s & Gender Studies Program, the Asian Studies Program’s South Asia Speaker Series returns to campus with a book talk to begin the semester.

Please join us to discuss Dr. Srila Roy‘s “Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India”. Book purchase will be available on site, and the talk will be followed by a short reception to request book signs.

About the Book: In Changing the Subject Srila Roy maps the rapidly transforming terrain of gender and sexual politics in India under the conditions of global neoliberalism. The consequences of India’s liberalization were paradoxical: the influx of global funds for social development and NGOs signaled the co-optation and depoliticization of struggles for women’s rights, even as they amplified the visibility and vitalization of queer activism. Roy reveals the specificity of activist and NGO work around issues of gender and sexuality through a decade-long ethnography of two West Bengal organizations, one working on lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues and the other on rural women’s empowerment. Tracing changes in feminist governmentality that were entangled in transnational neoliberalism, Roy shows how historical and highly local feminist currents shaped contemporary queer and nonqueer neoliberal feminisms. The interplay between historic techniques of activist governance and queer feminist governmentality’s focus on changing the self offers a new way of knowing feminism—both as always already co-opted and as a transformative force in the world.

About the Author: Srila Roy is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Her long-standing research and teaching expertise is in the area of transnational feminist and sexuality studies. Her latest books are the co-edited, Intimacy and Injury: in the wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa (Manchester University Press, 2022) and the sole-authored, Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India (Duke University Press, 2022). Changing the Subject was the winner of the Distinguished book award of the Sexualities section of the American Sociological Association and the best book award from the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies (FTGS) section of the International Studies Association. She is currently writing a book on decolonial feminism across the global South, for Wits University Press.

Please RSVP to ensure an accurate headcount for catering. To request accommodations due to a disability, contact Laura Lee at laura.lee@georgetown.edu no later than 09/03/2024. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill all requests made after this date. Please contact Laura with any other inquiries regarding this event.

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