Uma Chakravarti – författare

This book comprises the collected essays of Sharmila Rege (1964 – 2013), which span a range of themes, including critical perspectives on women’s movements, Dalit standpoint feminism, and the relationship between Women’s Studies and other disciplines. Written over two decades and more (from the 1990s to 2010), these pioneering essays draw from the struggles and writings of Dalit women, the long history of anticaste thought in Maharashtra and global feminist debates. Equally, they address enduring concerns to do with caste and gender, and call attention to the inseparability of struggles against caste and patriarchy.Framed and annotated by an introduction that places Sharmila's work in the intellectual and historical contexts that shaped it, the volume also features short prefatory notes by her colleagues on the various themes taken up for discussion. Addressing, as it does, the researcher, the activist and the teacher, the book is indispensable for students and researchers of women’s studies, feminism, gender studies, Dalit studies, minority studies, Sociology, as well as studies in language and rhetoric.

This book is an anthology of the collected essays of Sharmila Rege (1964 – 2013) that addresses themes to do with pedagogy and culture. Rege makes a compelling argument for rethinking the content of sociological knowledge and invokes in this context, Anticaste radical philosophies, associated with Mahatma Phule and Babasaheb Ambedkar as well as the writings of Dalit women. Equally, she seeks to rethink and engender the domain of Cultural Studies. She calls attention to 'Dalit counter-publics', comprising performance and commemorative traditions that are committed to ending the caste order and argues for a critical rethinking of the relationship between caste, sexuality, and popular culture.Framed and annotated by an introduction that places Sharmila's work in the intellectual and historical contexts that shaped it, the volume also features short prefatory notes by her colleagues on the various themes taken up for discussion. Addressing, as it does, the researcher, the activist and the teacher, the book is indispensable for students and researchers of Women’s Studies, feminism, gender studies, Dalit Studies, minority studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, as well as studies in language and rhetoric.

This book comprises the collected essays of Sharmila Rege (1964 – 2013), which span a range of themes, including critical perspectives on women’s movements, Dalit standpoint feminism, and the relationship between Women’s Studies and other disciplines. Written over two decades and more (from the 1990s to 2010), these pioneering essays draw from the struggles and writings of Dalit women, the long history of anticaste thought in Maharashtra and global feminist debates. Equally, they address enduring concerns to do with caste and gender, and call attention to the inseparability of struggles against caste and patriarchy.Framed and annotated by an introduction that places Sharmila's work in the intellectual and historical contexts that shaped it, the volume also features short prefatory notes by her colleagues on the various themes taken up for discussion. Addressing, as it does, the researcher, the activist and the teacher, the book is indispensable for students and researchers of women’s studies, feminism, gender studies, Dalit studies, minority studies, Sociology, as well as studies in language and rhetoric.

This book is an anthology of the collected essays of Sharmila Rege (1964 – 2013) that addresses themes to do with pedagogy and culture. Rege makes a compelling argument for rethinking the content of sociological knowledge and invokes in this context, Anticaste radical philosophies, associated with Mahatma Phule and Babasaheb Ambedkar as well as the writings of Dalit women. Equally, she seeks to rethink and engender the domain of Cultural Studies. She calls attention to 'Dalit counter-publics', comprising performance and commemorative traditions that are committed to ending the caste order and argues for a critical rethinking of the relationship between caste, sexuality, and popular culture.Framed and annotated by an introduction that places Sharmila's work in the intellectual and historical contexts that shaped it, the volume also features short prefatory notes by her colleagues on the various themes taken up for discussion. Addressing, as it does, the researcher, the activist and the teacher, the book is indispensable for students and researchers of Women’s Studies, feminism, gender studies, Dalit Studies, minority studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, as well as studies in language and rhetoric.

As the essays in this volume show, feminist writing has opened up ways of questioning and reinterpreting not only social life but also academic disciplines. The essays, themselves drawn from various disciplines and regions, explore epics, oral traditions, folksongs, puranic myths, prov-erbs, women’s letters, autobiographies, tribal practices, field-based information and archival sources in new and provocative ways. They bring out a range of patriarchal configurations of social reform, of work and family, the gendering of consumption, the relationship between state formations, caste and class stratification, colonial educational policies, new developmental paradigms and transformations in gender relations. In the Introduction, the editors locate these essays, not only in wider contexts, both past and present, but, more significantly, within the profounder problematic of patterns of persistence and change within patriarchies on the subcontinent. This as yet underexplored problematic they argue has the capacity to change many conventional notions of periodisation and historical transition.

Pandita Ramabai was one of India's earliest feminists. Honored with the title of Saraswati in Calcutta in 1879, she soon alienated the men who had initially supported her. A high-caste Hindu widow, Ramabai converted to Christianity, an act that was seen not only as a betrayal of her religion but of her very nation. A classic study, Rewriting History does more than introduce one of the foremost thinkers of nineteenth-century India; it rescues Ramabai from the marginalization of her contemporaries. Arguing that this controversial figure has been actively suppressed in the writing of India's pre-independence history, Uma Chakravarti liberates Ramabai with an acute and nuanced critique of the power relations and hierarchies within a colonized society. Thoroughly researched and meticulously detailed, Rewriting History is essential reading for those interested in gender, class, and caste in nineteenth-century India.