Contagious Peace: Friendship, Hospitality, and Humanity in Muslim South Asia

Speaker: 

Yasmin Saikia

Date: 

Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - 4:15pm
Linderman 200

Yasmin Saikia is Professor of History and the first holder of the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at Arizona State University. Originally from India, Yasmin had her early education at Aligarh Muslim University (India) and completed her graduate and doctoral work at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of three books and numerous articles and book chapters. Her recently published book, Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971 (Duke University Press, 2011) explores the story of the war of 1971 highlighting the memories of victims and perpetrators of violence spread across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In the book, she shows how individual acts and memories are woven into a collective narrative telling the story of survivors reclaiming insāniyat, humanity, which was a crucial lesson of the war. Insāniyat is at the heart of survivors’ message offering a possibility to rethink a new relationship between Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Yasmin is writing her fourth book tentatively titled Freedom Imaginings: The search for autonomy in British India (1920-1940). Additionally, she is undertaking a ten-year longitudinal research Learning Peace and Violence: A children’s history of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Her work on peace studies focusing on women and children’s experiences considers the layered intersections among religion, culture, and history alongside the project of memory building and Muslim identity politics in South Asia. Focusing particularly on Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, her research examines the language of non-violence that is often used in tandem with the practice of violence against women and vulnerable groups.

Lehigh University - Global Center for Islamic Studies - Contagious Peace - Yasmin Saikia

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