This presentation traces the complex trajectory of the anti-acid violence campaign in Bangladesh from the mid-1990s to present. By juxtaposing multiple narratives of the campaign by international actors, survivors, and local women activists, Professor Chowdhury weaves together a more complex understanding of transnational feminist praxis and women’s subjectivities. She argues that feminist organizing and its pitfalls must be understood through intra-movement dynamics as well as global structural inequalities shaping them. Through the use of Bina Akhter’s life narrative, she suggest that scholars and activists move beyond dualistic framings of women’s experiences of violence that position them as “good” or “bad” victims and challenge the terms “victims” or “survivors” in order to move towards a more liberatory epistemology that allows for narrative fluidity and agency.
Elora Halim Chowdhury is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She is a Faculty Affiliate to the Asian Studies Program, and the Asian American Studies Program. Her teaching and research interests include transnational feminisms, critical development studies, gendered violence and human rights advocacy with an emphasis on South Asia. She is the author of Transnationalism Reversed: Women Organizing Against Gendered Violence in Bangladesh (SUNY Press, 2011). Her book was awarded the National Women’s Studies Association Gloria Anzaldua book prize in 2012. She has published in venues such as Meridians: Feminism Race Transnationalism; International Feminist Journal of Politics; Women’s Studies International Forum; Gender, Place & Culture; Violence Against Women; Journal of Bangladesh Studies; Cultural Dynamics; Asian American Literary Review; Gender & Development; Human Rights Quarterly; Journal of Asian and African Studies.
Sponsored by the Human Rights Working Group of the Humanities Institute, Project Narrative, and DISCO.
