Date
Thu February 18th 2021, 12:00 - 1:00pm
Location
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Roanne Kantor: The Gender of Clean: Patriarchy, Art, and the Swachh Bharat Mission
By comparing extended fieldwork in rural Bihar 2013 with her return visit in 2018-19, Professor Kantor is able to observe some of the rhetorical impacts of the ongoing Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission, inaugurated in 2014. Why are claims about clean toilets, clean cookstoves, and clean environments increasingly made through "culturalist" idioms like Madhubani painting, Bollywood songs, and Hindi short stories? And how do these gestures naturalize the connection between public health and patriarchal power in rural India?
Roanne Kantor is Assistant Professor of English