LILA PRISM Lecture Series 2013: The Lectures

Mad­havi Menon

Mad­havi Menon is Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Ashoka Uni­ver­sity in Delhi. She works on ques­tions of de­sire and iden­tity, and is the au­thor of Wan­ton Words: Rhetoric and Sex­u­al­ity in the Eng­lish Re­nais­sance (2004) and Un­his­tor­i­cal Shake­speare: Queer The­ory in Shake­spearean Lit­er­a­ture and Film (2008). Her cur­rent work is on ideas of dif­fer­ence and in­dif­fer­ence in re­la­tion to sex­u­al­ity, cul­ture, and tem­po­ral­ity.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from her PRISM Lec­ture:
“We Have Al­ways Been Les­bians”

Jonathan Gil Har­ris

Jonathan Gil Har­ris, Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Ashoka Uni­ver­sity, is in­ter­ested in early mod­ern un­der­stand­ings of glob­al­iza­tion and the for­eign, and how these have helped shape our knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ences of bod­ies, dis­ease, com­merce, time, and re­li­gious dif­fer­ence. He is the au­thor of For­eign Bod­ies and the Body Politic (1998), Sick Economies: Drama, Mer­can­til­ism and Dis­ease in Shake­speare’s Eng­land (2004), Un­timely Mat­ter in the Time of Shake­speare (2009), Shake­speare and Lit­er­ary The­ory (2010), and Mar­vel­lous Re­pos­ses­sions: The Tem­pest, Glob­al­iza­tion, and the Wak­ing Dream of Par­adise (2012).

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“The First Fi­rangis”

Rich Rice

Rich Rice is As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Texas Tech Uni­ver­sity, USA, where he di­rects the de­part­ment’s Mul­ti­lit­er­acy Lab. He teaches courses in new media, in­ter­cul­tural com­mu­ni­ca­tion, rhetoric, and tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. His most re­cent co-edited col­lec­tion is en­ti­tled ePort­fo­lio Per­for­mance Sup­port Sys­tems. He fo­cuses on prob­lem-based uni­ver­sal de­sign, study abroad mod­els, mo­bile med­i­cine, photo es­says, media labs, fac­ulty pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion, and hy­per­me­di­ated teach­ing philoso­phies.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“New Media Translo­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion”

Jay­ati Ghosh

Jay­ati Ghosh is Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics at the Cen­tre for Eco­nomic Stud­ies and Plan­ning, JNU, New Delhi. Since 2002 she has been the Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of In­ter­na­tional De­vel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics As­so­ci­ates (IDEAS). Her re­cent books in­clude Work and well being in the age of fi­nance; The mar­ket that failed: Ne­olib­eral eco­nomic re­forms in India; Track­ing the macro­econ­omy; Never done and poorly paid: Women’s work in glob­al­is­ing India; and After Cri­sis: Ad­just­ment, re­cov­ery and fragility in East Asia.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from her PRISM Lec­ture:
“In­cor­po­ra­tion and Ex­clu­sion in the In­dian Econ­omy”

Kanika Batra

Kanika Batra is As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor at the De­part­ment of Eng­lish, Texas Tech Uni­ver­sity. She spe­cial­izes in Post­colo­nial lit­er­a­tures and teaches and re­searches Post­colo­nial Fem­i­nism and Post­colo­nial Queer Stud­ies. Her ar­ti­cles have ap­peared in jour­nals such as Callaloo, Fem­i­nist Re­view, The Jour­nal of Com­mon­wealth and Post­colo­nial Stud­ies, In­ter­ven­tions: In­ter­na­tional Jour­nal of Post­colo­nial Stud­ies. Her third book, sched­uled to ap­pear in 2015, is en­ti­tled Post­colo­nial Coun­ter­publics: Gen­ders and Sex­u­al­i­ties in Print.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from her PRISM Lec­ture:
“The­atre and the Right to Food Sta­ples in India”

Richard Ma­ha­p­a­tra

Richard Ma­ha­p­a­tra, a se­nior ed­i­tor with Down To Earth mag­a­zine, has been re­port­ing on de­vel­op­ment is­sues for the last 15 years. He has been writ­ing on the link­ages be­tween en­vi­ron­ment and poverty. His re­port­ing analy­ses and dis­cusses de­vel­op­ments at vil­lage level in the wider con­text of na­tional and global changes.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“Re­port­ing Glob­al­i­sa­tion from a Vil­lage Date­line”

GN Devy

GN Devy writes in three lan­guages – Eng­lish, Marathi and Gu­jarati – and has won lit­er­ary awards for his var­i­ous works in all three lan­guages. He is the founder of the Bhasha Re­search and Pub­li­ca­tion Cen­tre, Bar­oda, the Adi­vasi Akademi, Tej­gadh, and the Bud­han The­atre, Ahmed­abad. He headed and led the 50 vol­ume Peo­ple’s Lin­guis­tic Sur­vey of India. His major books in Eng­lish in­clude After Am­ne­sia, A Nomad Called Thief and The GN Devy Reader.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“Why Do the Adi­va­sis Want to Speak?”

Mary E John

Mary E. John is cur­rently Se­nior Fel­low at the Cen­tre for Women’s De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, New Delhi. Her areas of in­ter­est span the cross- and anti-dis­ci­pli­nary fields of women and gen­der stud­ies; she has been work­ing in and writ­ing about fem­i­nist pol­i­tics for over two decades. She is presently Co-Chair of the UGC Task Force on Is­sues of Safety for Women and Youth on In­dian Cam­puses. Re­cent pub­li­ca­tions in­clude Women’s Stud­ies in India: A Reader (2008); the co-au­thored Plan­ning Fam­i­lies, Plan­ning Gen­der: The Ad­verse Child Sex Ratio in North India (2008), and guest edit­ing Sem­i­nar on the issue of De­moc­ra­tiz­ing Knowl­edge: A Sym­po­sium on Re­form­ing Higher Ed­u­ca­tion (Au­gust 2011).

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from her PRISM Lec­ture:
“Re-Think­ing Vi­o­lence Against Women”

Ambai

Ambai (CS Lak­shmi) is a his­to­rian and a cre­ative writer in Tamil. She has been an in­de­pen­dent re­searcher in Women’s Stud­ies for the last thirty-five years. Her sto­ries have been trans­lated in two vol­umes en­ti­tled A Pur­ple Sea and In a For­est, A Deer. She is cur­rently the Di­rec­tor of SPAR­ROW (Sound & Pic­ture Archives for Re­search on Women) and the se­ries Ed­i­tor of five vol­umes of trans­la­tions of 87 writ­ers from 23 lan­guages of India.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from her PRISM Lec­ture:
“Ways of See­ing: Text, Trans­la­tion and Au­thors Who Refuse to Die”

Sadanand Menon

Sadanand Menon has been ex­plor­ing the charged space link­ing pol­i­tics and cul­ture for sev­eral decades through his work in media, ped­a­gogy and ac­tivism. He is cur­rently Ad­junct Fac­ulty at the Asian Col­lege of Jour­nal­ism, Chen­nai, and at the Hu­man­i­ties De­part­ment of IIT, Madras. He is mem­ber of Apex Ad­vi­sory Panel, Na­tional Mu­seum, Delhi, of Apex Ad­vi­sory Com­mit­tee, Na­tional Gallery of Mod­ern Art, Ben­galuru, of Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi, of the Gen­eral Coun­cil, In­dian In­sti­tute of Ad­vanced Study, Shimla, and Man­ag­ing Trustee of SPACES, Chen­nai.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“State of Arts In­sti­tu­tions in India”

Sun­dar Sarukkai

Sun­dar Sarukkai is the Di­rec­tor of the Ma­ni­pal Cen­tre for Phi­los­o­phy & Hu­man­i­ties, Ma­ni­pal Uni­ver­sity, India. He is the au­thor of Trans­lat­ing the World: Sci­ence and Lan­guage (2002), Phi­los­o­phy of Sym­me­try (2004), In­dian Phi­los­o­phy and Phi­los­o­phy of Sci­ence (2005), What is Sci­ence? (2012) and The Cracked Mir­ror: An In­dian De­bate on Ex­pe­ri­ence and The­ory (2012, co-au­thored with Gopal Guru). He is an Ed­i­to­r­ial Ad­vi­sory Board mem­ber of the Leonardo Book Se­ries pub­lished by MIT Press and the Se­ries Ed­i­tor for Sci­ence and So­ci­ety, Rout­ledge.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“Think­ing and Learn­ing in the Age of Maggi Noo­dles”

Vinod K Jose

Vinod K. Jose is the Ex­ec­u­tive Ed­i­tor of The Car­a­van and an award-win­ning jour­nal­ist. He has pre­vi­ously worked as a pro­ducer from South Asia for pub­lic radio sta­tions in the US and Eu­rope. He is also doc­tor in So­ci­ol­ogy. The Oz Prize jury 2013 cited his ar­ti­cles “The Em­peror Un­crowned: The Rise of Naren­dra Modi”, a pro­file of Gu­jarat’s Chief Min­is­ter and “On the Suc­cess of Ethics”, about the state of media in­dus­try in India, for re­port­ing ex­cel­lence.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“Media and Re­spon­si­bil­ity”

Anil Gupta

Anil K Gupta is Pro­fes­sor at In­dian In­sti­tute of Man­age­ment (Ahmed­abad), Ex­ec­u­tive Vice Chair of Na­tional In­no­va­tion Foun­da­tion, Founder of Honey Bee Net­work, SRISTI and GIAN, Fel­low of The World Acad­emy of Art and Sci­ence (Cal­i­for­nia 2001) and Mem­ber of the Na­tional In­no­va­tion Coun­cil. He aims at sup­port­ing so­cial in­no­va­tions in pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors to ex­pand en­tre­pre­neur­ial op­por­tu­ni­ties for dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple, and to strengthen the pur­suit of au­then­tic­ity in pub­lic life. He and his pro­ject re­ceived mul­ti­ple na­tional and in­ter­na­tional ho­n­ours.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“India Reimag­ined, Re­de­fined and Reignited:
A per­spec­tive on the grass­roots, youth­ful cre­ativ­ity and in­no­va­tion”

Harsh Man­der

Harsh Man­der, so­cial worker and writer, works with sur­vivors of mass vi­o­lence, hunger, home­less per­sons, street chil­dren, mi­nori­ties, bonded work­ers and other mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple. His books in­clude Un­heard Voices: Sto­ries of For­got­ten Lives; The Ripped Chest: Pub­lic Pol­icy and the Poor in India, Fear and For­give­ness: The Af­ter­math of Mas­sacre; Frac­tured Free­dom: Chron­i­cles from India’s Mar­gins, Un­touch­a­bil­ity in Rural India (co-au­thored), and his newest Ash in the Belly: India’s Un­fin­ished Bat­tle against Hunger. He reg­u­larly writes columns for the Hindu and Hin­dus­tan Times.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“In­equal­ity and In­dif­fer­ence in India”

Sri­nath Reddy

Prof. K. Sri­nath Reddy is presently Pres­i­dent, Pub­lic Health Foun­da­tion of India (PHFI) and he for­merly headed the De­part­ment of Car­di­ol­ogy at All India In­sti­tute of Med­ical Sci­ences (AIIMS). He has served on many WHO ex­pert pan­els and is presently the Pres­i­dent of the World Heart Fed­er­a­tion (2013-14). Prof. Reddy is a mem­ber of the Lead­er­ship Coun­cil of the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment So­lu­tions Net­work, es­tab­lished to as­sist the United Na­tions in de­vel­op­ing the post-2015 goals for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. He chairs the The­matic Group on Health in the SDSN.

Read the full pro­file in our event re­port from his PRISM Lec­ture:
“Uni­ver­sal Health Cov­er­age for India: Dream or De­vel­op­ment Im­per­a­tive?”