Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Time: 3pm – 6pm

Location: Sakamaki C-308

Professor Keya Maitra
Professor of Philosophy at UNC Asheville

If you plan on attending, please RSVP to Professor Sean Smith

Please read text if you plan to attend: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html

At least 10 years before Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes Herland–often considered the first feminist utopian writing within Western feminist context, Rokeya Sekhawat Hossain– a Bengali Muslim women—publishes Sultana’s Dream in 1905 in pre-independent India. Targeting the practices of purdah & zenana faced by women in colonial Bengal, Rokeya imagines a world of complete freedom and peace where men are in seclusion while women are in charge. The overall goal of my proposed workshop is to introduce Rokeya’s little known utopian story and make explicit its numerous arguments while exploring carefully their philosophical implications, Roushan Jahan and Hanna Papanek argue that Sultana’s Dream represents “feminist sentiments grow[ing] from indigenous roots.” In structuring the interactive and cross-culturally designed workshop around the narrative of Sultana’s Dream, my goal will be to engage the ways it offers a location to explore important philosophical questions. My working conclusion is that in being disruptive and utopian, transformative and liberatory, Sultana’s Dream proposes interesting philosophical accounts such as that of decolonial feminist consciousness and of postcolonial social identity. This engagement allows us to expand the purview and cross-cultural relevance of Indian philosophy when construed broadly.

All events are Co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies, Philosophy Department, History Department, and the Department of Religions and Ancient Civilizations.