Wednesday, April 10 at 5pm
Humanities 250
Anjali Arondekar will give a book talk about her latest book, Abundance: Sexuality’s History (Duke University Press, 2023). Arondekar is a Professor of Feminist Studies and the Founding Director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. In Abundance, Arondekar refutes the historical common sense that archival loss is foundational to a subaltern history of sexuality. Instead, Arondekar theorizes the radical abundance of sexuality through the archives of the Gomantak Maratha Samaj—a caste-oppressed devadasi collective in South Asia—that are plentiful and quotidian, imaginative and ordinary. For Arondekar, abundance is inextricably linked to the histories of subordinated groups in ways that challenge the narratives of their constant devaluation. This comparative and provocative history marshals its archival materials from a range of historical and literary sources in English, Marathi, Konkani and Portuguese. Multigeneric and multilingual, transregional and historically supple, Abundance centers sexuality within post/colonial, and anti/caste histories. The book extends connections between Dalit/Bahujan studies and queer studies, between historical forms and political narratives, and will push scholars to interrogate orientations to caste, sexuality and historiography in South Asia. Arondekar's first book or the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India (Duke University Press, 2009) was the winner of the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for best book in lesbian, gay, or queer studies in literature and cultural studies, Modern Language Association, 2010.
Co-Sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, History Department and Asian Languages and Civilizations.