“The Fairer Sex” Writes

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What writers would you highlight to commemorate Women’s History Month? Comment below!

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Image Source: suggestive celine (via Flickr)

March is Women’s History Month and an appropriate time to highlight some of the women’s voices that represent world literature. After all,

  • American Hillary Clinton, who is an author of five books, is running for the U.S. presidency,
  • Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is an author of five books, has a TED Talk that opens our courses concerned with social justice,
  • and Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, author of one book, continues to fight for the equal education of girls and boys.

Check out these literary works from across the globe that engage discourses of women’s and gender rights in ways that are frequently subversive, occasionally confrontational, and always powerful.

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Mahasweta Devi. Image Source: TopNews

Draupadi” by Mahasweta Devi (1978)

Tags: India, South Asia, Bengali, short story

In a poor, post-colonial town in India, rumor has it that an infamous young woman, “Dopdi,” who has yet to reach the age of 30, has become a menace to local authorities. Fighting for labor rights and attacking officials without warning, she presents a dangerous local figure. Yet no one can identify her with any certainty. While the police have laid traps to draw her out of hiding in the forest, Dopdi continues to evade capture. In the end, what is meant to be Dopdi’s undoing invigorates her spirit and renders her an even more powerful threat. The best reading of this story is dependent on minimal research into the South Asian mythical epic of the Mahabharata. Themes of gender, sexual violence, and classism are strong threads in this short and powerful work. To continue the conversation addressing sexual violence as a world phenomenon and its prevalence in South Asia, attend the April 5th evening screening of India’s Daughter at the Spurlock Museum.

More Like This: Gayatri Spivak’s essay Can the Subaltern Speak? (India and postcolonial nations), most any title by Jhumpa Lahiri (India & the USA)

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Gayatri Spivak. Image Source: Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung on Flickr

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Jhumpa Lahiri. Image Source: Il Circollo del lettori on Flickr

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (1988)

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Tsitsi Dangarembga. Image Source: Pan American Center on Flickr

Tags: Zimbabwe, Africa, English, novel

In this novel, “Tambu” is a young girl living in a country then known as Rhodesia in the 1960s. Because she is female, her ambition for academic study is not well supported by her community—that is, until her older brother suddenly dies and someone must take on a role of leadership and status to save her family from economic ruin. As Tambu is introduced to a new world of privilege, knowledge, and experience, readers examine what she leaves behind and what these sacrifices mean in shaping a new, hybrid identity. This bildungsroman succeeds in taking on the ambitious goal of engaging discourses of gender, colonialism, and competing cultures in a work deemed one of the most important to have come out of Africa. If you are a current University of Illinois student and interested in these themes and this novel in particular, consider taking a course taught by Dr. Manisha Babb. She teaches a cross-listed course called Modern African Literature offered in the English, African Studies, Comparative World Literature, and French departments, respectively as ENG 470, AFST 410, CW 410, and FR 410.

More Like This: Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre (Senegal), Maria Nsué’s Ekomo (Equatorial Guinea)

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Mariama Bâ. Image Source: Wikipedia

A photo of Maria Nsue. Image Source: escritores.org

Maria Nsué. Image Source: escritores.org

Emails from Scheherazad (2003) by Mohja Kahf

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Mohja Kahf. Image Source: Aslan Media on Flickr

Tags: Syria, the Middle Eastern Diaspora, poetry

Do you remember Scheherazad(e)? She was the sole wife and queen to King Shahryar who eluded death by telling tales within tales that never ended? The stories of Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba all stem from this famous text. Mohja Kahf, a poet of Syrian descent, revisits this legacy in her compilation of poems. Emails from Scheherazad. Her bi-cultural identity informs and enriches her work, as seen in the poem “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears.” In it she describes being the product of both a Middle Eastern and an American culture. She regularly contradicts the widely held notion that being a Muslim and a woman is synonymous with being oppressed and her poems allude to globally recognizable female characters who face adversity—Eve, Malinche, Hagar, and more—suggesting a shared history and resilience. To get more connected to the local Muslim community on University campus, check out the United Muslims and Minority Advocates (UMMA) on Facebook.

More Like This: Arabian Nights/One Thousand and One Nights, Mona Eltahawy’s Headscarves and Hymens (Egypt & the USA), Ghada Abdel Aal’s I Want to Get Married (Egypt)

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Mona Eltahawy. Image Source: Aspen Institute (via Flickr)

 

A photo of Ghada Abdel Aal. Image Source Christopher Rose on Flickr

Ghada Abdel Aal. Image Source: Christopher Rose (via Flickr)

Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1983)

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Barbara Streisand as Yentl. Image Source: Ziegfeld Girl on Flickr

Tags: Poland & the Jewish Diaspora, Yiddish, short story

This text is actually written by a man. Because it inherently engages questions of genders and their roles in society, and also features a female protagonist, it remains relevant to global literature that tackles issues concerning women’s lives. The main character in this work, Yentl, has been spoiled by her father as a child by being allowed to study sacred rabbinical texts, an activity strictly reserved for men in her community. When her father dies, not wanting to abandon her religious learning, she makes a plan to hide her sex and continue on her path of erudition. However, there are some unanticipated expectations associated with her new role as a male. The cinematic adaptation of Yentl starring Barbara Streisand is inextricably linked to this literary work. If you’re an enrolled student and interested in this area, seek out the Program in Jewish Culture & Society for more about works written in Yiddish and on the Jewish diaspora. A selection of the program’s courses can be found on the program’s website.

More Like This: Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank, Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots 

A photo of Anne Frank. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Anne Frank. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

A photo of Deborah Feldman. Image Source: Zimbio

Deborah Feldman. Image Source: Zimbio

Kinsey Report” by Rosario Castellanos

An image of Rosario Castellanos. Image Source: Milagros Mata Gil on Flickr

Rosario Castellanos. Image Source: Milagros Mata Gil (via Flickr)

Tags: Mexico, Latin America, Spanish, poetry

The title of this poem refers to American sexologist Alfred Kinsey, whose published works on human sexual behavior became well known in the mid to late 20th century. While this poem makes for a quick read, it remains in the reader’s memory indefinitely. It features six different feminine voices that expound on the condition of their gender. One woman reports on her marriage which has become a hollow and juridical union of self-sacrifice and anxiety; another fears being deemed a prude for lack of sexual activity or a whore for any carnal intimacy engaged outside of marriage; a third wistfully awaits a Prince Charming who will whisk her away from any care she might have. All of the voices problematize notions of female gender and show how societal expectations and traditional roles can, to say the very least, be limiting. For ways to find more Latin American literature, see this lib guide.

More Like This: All titles by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Mexico), all titles by Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Sabina Berman’s (Mexico) Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda

A drawing of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Image Source: Wikipedia

A drawing of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Image Source: Wikipedia

A photo of Clarice Lispector. Image source: ana.claudia on Flickr

Clarice Lispector. Image source: ana.claudia (via Flickr)

Happy reading, sharing, and happy Women’s History Month! Let us know what additional authors you would add to this conversation. Also drop by the Main Library’s Marshall Gallery (first floor, east side of the building ) to see an exhibit curated by Leanna Barcelona highlighting women’s history at the University of Illinois. If you want even more titles, visit the Undergraduate Library’s post to commemorate Women’s History Month last year.

For more posts like these, make sure to like our Facebook page, where we share a new Glocal Notes article every week of the semester.

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“Sari, Not Sorry”: Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation

The author acknowledges that the pun-intended title originates with Tanya Rawal’s “Saree, Not Sorry.”

Cultural appropriation was in the headlines (again) late this January when Coldplay and Beyoncé released a divisive music video, “Hymn for the Weekend”. The video was set in stereotypical, exotic India complete with peacocks, temples, yogis, Hindu gods, poverty, saris, glittering nose rings, and more. Oh, and of course people throwing around colored powder because if you believe the stereotypes, Holi (the iconic spring festival of colors) is a daily occurrence in India.

What exactly is cultural appropriation? Scholar and philosopher James Young defines it as a phenomenon in which “Members of one culture (I will call them outsiders) take for their own, or for their own use, items produced by a member or members of another culture (call them insiders)”, in his book Cultural Appropriation in the Arts. Importantly, this typically involves a dominant cultural group exploiting the culture of less privileged groups—i.e. when an American pop star wears a bindi and is deemed “fashionable” or “worldly” but experiences less or none of the historical discrimination or systemic oppression associated with being part of a minority group or having origins in much of the Global South. Frequently, there is a thin and fragile line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. Personally, as a Jewish woman who is a South Asian Studies specialist, who also studies Middle Eastern and West African dance, I have regularly had to confront this issue. I have had to ask myself whether it is appropriate to use face paint in an African dance performance, or if I can get away with wearing a beloved salwar kameez (traditional South Asian outfit consisting of pants and a tunic) to work. While I struggle to make respectful decisions, I imagine that sometimes I get it wrong, which is why it has been so important to educate myself on the topic and be receptive to the experiences of and feedback from people with different cultural backgrounds.

Me wearing a salwar kameez to attend an Indian cultural function on campus.

The author dressed in a salwar kameez en route to attend an Indian cultural function on the Illinois campus.

Regarding the Coldplay video, there has been plenty of intelligent writing already published on the internet! The Times of India had several articles on the topic; National Public Radio talked about itThe Guardian wrote about it; and even the BBC had a say. One of the most thought-provoking takes I have read is author Kavitha Rajagopalan’s opinion article in The Observer. Rajagopalan takes the cultural appropriation critique a step further by asserting that the more insidious problem of this video is that it presents India as an exclusively Hindu country. In fact, India has an extremely ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse population that is omitted from the music video’s narrative. However, not everyone was upset by the video. Among many others, a column in The Hindu newspaper gave an alternative viewpoint saying that it “shows healthy appreciation for Indian culture, peppered with the idea of India as seen in the Western world”

Just Google “Coldplay” and you’ll see that “Coldplay cultural appropriation” is one of the top suggestions.

A screenshot of a Google search for “Coldplay” with a suggested search of “coldplay cultural appropriation” as the top suggestions.

Coldplay and Beyoncé are not alone in drawing ire from the Indian community And importantly, cultural appropriation is not just a South Asian problem. These artists are merely the newest members of a popular culture club that regularly references minority and traditionally “othered” groups to boost sales, boasting members such as Gwen Stefani, Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Paul Simon, and Katy Perry. A complete list might exhaust you.

Image grabbed from Twitter at: http://tinyurl.com/katyperrycatw

An image of Katy Perry dressed as an ancient Egyptian queen, a geisha, and co-opting a popular African-American hairstyle. Image borrowed from Twitter at: http://tinyurl.com/katyperrycatw

Clearly cultural appropriation is a complex and sensitive issue. Here are some library and campus resources that will help you to frame your perspectives on the topic:

  1. The Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations (OIIR): As stated on the OIIR website, this is a great campus resource that “seeks to improve campus climate by providing transformative learning experiences to the Illinois community that result in an appreciation for diversity and cross-cultural engagement”. This office holds workshops and lectures on the topic of cultural appropriation. Follow the OIIR calendar here.
  2. Orientalism: Discussions of cultural appropriation often refer back to this classic 1978 text written by literary theorist Edward Said. This is not an easy text to read, but it is a must read for understanding colonialism, cultural studies, and many of the humanities’ disciplines.
  3. Cultural Appropriation and the Arts: “A philosopher undertakes a systematic investigation of the moral and aesthetic issues to which cultural appropriation gives rise. .. Questions considered include: “Can cultural appropriation result in the production of aesthetically successful works of art?” and “Is cultural appropriation in the arts morally objectionable?” (Our library catalog).
  4. The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation: This book anthology “undertakes a comprehensive and systematic investigation of the moral and aesthetic questions that arise from the practice of cultural appropriation. It explores cultural appropriation in a wide variety of contexts, among them the arts and archaeology, museums, and religion” (Our library catalog).
  5. Who Owns Culture?: Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law: This e-book “offers the first comprehensive analysis of cultural authorship and appropriation within American law. From indigenous art to Linux, Susan Scafidi takes the reader on a tour of the no-man’s-land between law and culture, pausing to ask what prompts us to offer legal protection to works of literature, but not folklore? What does it mean for a creation to belong to a community, especially a diffuse or fractured one? Can we strike a balance between affiliative ownership and a creative commons? And is our national culture the product of Yankee ingenuity or cultural kleptomania? Providing new insights to communal authorship, cultural appropriation, intellectual property law, and the formation of American culture, this innovative and accessible guide greatly enriches future legal understanding of cultural production” (Our library catalog).
  6. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization: “In this bold look at the cultural effects of a shrinking world, leading cultural theorist Arjun Appadurai provides fresh ways of looking at popular consumption patterns, debates about multiculturalism, and ethnic violence in a broad global perspective” (Our library catalog).
  7. Soul Thieves: The Appropriation and Misrepresentation of African American Popular Culture: This work “Considers the misappropriation of African American popular culture through various genres, largely Hip Hop, to argue that while such cultural creations have the potential to be healing agents, they are still exploited -often with the complicity of African Americans- for commercial purposes and to maintain white ruling class hegemony” (Our library catalog).
  8. Selling the Indian: Commercializing & Appropriating American Indian Cultures: “For more than a hundred years, outsiders enamored of the perceived strengths of American Indian cultures have appropriated and distorted elements of them for their own purposes—more often than not ignoring the impact of the process on the Indians themselves. This book contains eight original contributions that consider the selling of American Indian culture and how it affects the Native community. It goes beyond studies of “white shamanism” to focus on commercial ventures, challenging readers to reconsider how Indian cultures have been commercialized in the twentieth century” (Our library catalog).

Here is a bonus non-library resource! If you’re trying to decide whether a fashion choice is cultural appropriation or cultural appreciation, check out this eminently readable and illustrated style guide to help you make a respectful decision. For more posts like these, be sure to follow the International & Area Studies Library’s Facebook page where we publish new posts for Glocal Notes every week of the semester.

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Buying Trips from Urbana to Bangladesh

Ever wonder how the shelves and stacks get populated with just the materials you need for your research? Here’s a look into a buying trip recently made by our very own South Asian Studies Librarian, Mara Thacker. She was one of the fist to participate in the University Library’s pilot program designed to allow librarians to travel overseas, seek relationships with vendors, and purchase materials to develop our collections here in Urbana-Champaign. This Q & A session reveals how we curate our library materials to better serve you. A special thanks goes out to the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies whose dedication to our library and regular support also made this project possible.

What is a buying trip?

Buying trips are exactly what they sound like—a trip, often overseas, for the purpose of purchasing books, films, and other materials for the library. Not all buying trips result in an immediate purchase but instead lay groundwork for a future acquisition or for a partnership to digitize materials so our community can access them.

Are all library workers able to go on buying trees?

Any library worker whose job responsibilities include collection development (in plainer language—buying books and other library resources) is eligible to go on a trip. These trips usually are targeting unique international materials which does exclude people who only buy materials from the U.S. At this point, mostly International and Area Studies Library faculty have taken advantage of the Library’s pilot program to fund buying trips, but the task force that is managing the pilot funding program is actively inviting other subject specialists with an interest in purchasing international materials to apply.

Where did this trip take you? How do you select what sites you want to visit?

In my most recent buying trip, I went to Delhi, Kolkata (Calcutta), and Bengaluru in India, and Dhaka, Bangladesh. I selected these sites based on a few factors. Delhi and Kolkata both had large book fairs that I planned to attend, but in addition to that, Delhi had two major vendors that I wanted to meet with, and Kolkata is the largest center for Bengali language publishing. Since Bengali language materials were one of collecting priorities, I also chose to go to Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was important to me to visit a South Asian country other than India because my subject specialization covers seven countries in total and I have been on five trips to India but not a single trip to one of the others. I later found out that I was the first U.S.-based librarian to visit Bangladesh for a buying trip in a long time so I’m really glad I chose to go there. Finally, I chose to visit Bengaluru because I had been in contact with a comic collector there who I wanted to meet with.

The crowd at the very popular Ekushey Boi Mela book fair in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

This photo gives you an idea of the crowd at the very popular Ekushey Boi Mela book fair in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Are all buying trips international?

For the purposes of the pilot funding program, yes.

Can’t you just buy materials online?

While it’s true that many materials are available online, not everything is easy to find online. Some international vendors are better than others in terms of having complete, easy-to-search websites. To illustrate my point, take the case of the comic collector in Bengaluru. I had been chatting with him over email off and on for more than a year but he was either unable or unwilling to give me a complete picture of all of his materials and how much he would charge for them. When I met with him, it turned out he had a lot more than I had been led to believe—much more than I could ever hope to buy in one trip! In the course of our conversation, he revealed that he had been reluctant to sell to me before because he didn’t know how credible our institution was or whether or not we would take proper care of the comics. Comics are his passion and he did not want the materials damaged, resold or thrown into some dusty corner. I explained to him my vision for the University of Illinois to have the most comprehensive comic collection in North America including rare titles that would be preserved in our Rare Books & Manuscripts Library. In the end, not only did I buy a pile of out-of-print Indrajal comics from him, he has now agreed to be a vendor and to sell to us directly. That said, I imagine I will want to visit him again in the future because he has piles and piles of comics, many of which are not cataloged. I’d like a few more days to sort through them and find some gems.

Book seller at Howrah Junction train station in Kolkata

Bookseller at Howrah Junction train station in Kolkata. These small stalls at transportation hubs in India are some of the only places where you can find vernacular language pulp fiction novels.

What’s your budget for buying library materials? Do you go with a list in mind? Are there items that are “high priority” (censored items, rare items, limited publications, etc.)?

These trips are generally meant to target materials that are difficult to acquire through normal collection channels, though the difficulty could range from “Oh, I didn’t know this existed” to “Only one copy exists in the entire world”. The challenge is that if materials are really rare and do not already have a record in the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), they are going to require original cataloging and if they are fragile, they will require special processing. This can be expensive and time consuming and absolutely requires advance planning with technical services and cataloging.

Prior to leaving on the trip, I emailed the UIUC faculty working in and on South Asian Studies to solicit both specific requests as well as general topical requests. I compiled these along with my own ideas into a list of collecting priorities and I printed out copies to take during the trip. I also emailed the list in advance to a few of the larger vendors who I had prescheduled meetings with. One special area I was targeting was comics for the South Asian comic collection. The comic collection really serves to distinguish our South Asian collection from other such collections and is an important contribution to the national collection. Right now, vendor coverage of South Asian comics is somewhat spotty so it takes a bit more work to build up these resources.

World Comics India booth at the book fair in New Delhi

Mara Thacker at the World Comics India booth at the book fair in New Delhi. The orange bag behind my chair is full of purchases to send back to the library!

Typically, the budget to purchase materials on a buying trip is the same as a subject specialist’s regular collections budget. However, on this last trip, the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES) had written into a grant proposal some funding to acquire language learning materials for South Asian languages including Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit and Bengali. Altogether I budgeted around $6000 for materials purchases and shipping, half of which was from the CSAMES grant and the other half of which came from my regular collections budget.

How do you get the items safely back to the States?

I usually allocate roughly 30% of my budget for shipping the items back. International shipping can be complicated, so, on my last buying trip, I had one major vendor, D.K. Agencies, as well as the Library of Congress offices in Dhaka and Delhi office help. I carried back a few items in my luggage, but for the most part I try to avoid that so I can travel light as I’m moving between several cities in a short amount of time.

Are there any obstacles or difficulties the layperson might not know about in regard to buying trips?

Of course there are predictable challenges like paying for things in an economy where credit cards aren’t always accepted, spotty wifi connections, and the fear of a major digestive incident. Then there are less predictable things like political demonstrations, transportation strikes, and run-ins with street animals. True story: On my first ever buying trip, I got bitten by a street dog and had to get a rabies treatment in an Indian hospital!

One challenge that may be surprising to our readers is that finding a balance between work and pleasure while on these trips is a challenge. At home, we usually work 40 hours a week and have time off on the weekends, but when on a buying trip, one is constantly aware that the university is paying a good deal of expenses to support the trip and there is a self-imposed pressure to always be on duty.

Fortunately, being in India is a treat and the locale made the work activities extra fun. Attending a literature festival or book fair is probably something I would choose to do in my spare time anyway because I’m a bibliophile. But, I did do a few personal things for myself while there. For example, in Bengaluru, my friend Kunal took me on a vintage motorcycle ride to see the largest air show in Asia and I spent a few hours one evening trying to track down a restaurant called Gulati’s that I was told had some of the best butter chicken in India! Outside of those adventures, I worked over 40 hours a week because after a full day of visiting shops, publishers, and vendors, I would continue checking catalogs, respond to emails, take documentation of the day’s activities and purchases, and plan the next day’s schedule.

Vintrage Royal Enfield motorcycle.

Headed out to the air show with Kunal on a vintage Royal Enfield motorcycle!

Where do you want to go next?

I was really set on returning to Bangladesh but as the security situation there grows steadily worse, including three murders of secular bloggers in less than a year, I’m not sure if it will be possible in the immediate future. I’d like to visit Sri Lanka because I’ve never been and I’d like to get some Sri Lankan comics for the collection and make contacts there. I’d also like to go to South India which is one of my favorite places on earth and also happens to have some major popular culture production . Including these places would make for a compelling buying trip application because they would expand my network into other South Asian countries, and therefore expand my reach in the services I can provide to students looking to do research in South Asia. The comic collection is also an important collection both in terms of contributing to the national collection and also just in terms of distinguishing our local collection, so targeting places to get unique acquisitions for that collection is helpful.

How can U of I community members find out more about library workers’ buying trips?

Though buying trips are just a small fraction of the international work done by UIUC librarians, they are included in this map we have been developing that shows where all our librarians have traveled for work. My recent buying trip to South Asia is included as well as my colleagues’ buying trips to Togo, China, and Cuba. The public can also find out more about these trips by following the International and Area Studies (IAS) Library’s Facebook page and Glocal Notes blog. There will also be a library exhibit next fall about these trips to be announced on our social media accounts. If you want to read more about my last trip, see the forthcoming column in the journal International Information & Library Review. We’ll be sure to share link once it is live.

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Chai Wai Series: Gender-Based Violence in the Global South—South Asia and Beyond

by Katrina Spencer

November 12, 2014

intro

The Chai Wai Series Tackles Gender-Based Violence

  • Had Jyoti Singh Pandey, victim of a fatal attack in 2012, been a poor woman, would the media have given the same attention to her case?

These were some of the questions addressed Wednesday of last week at the second meeting of the Chai Wai Series. Envisioned by South Asian Librarian Mara Thacker and doctoral candidate in history and instructor Julie Laut, this discussion was a direct offshoot of the History 365 course, “Gendering War, Migration and Memory: Fact and Fiction in Modern South Asia”. The research collected around the theme “Gender-based violence in the Global South: South Asia and Beyond” formed part of Laut’s students’ culminating project for class. Largely structured around South Asian literature, the course allowed students to create a lib guide, a rich compilation of relevant resources organized in one space that is informative, collaborative, public and enduring.

conversation

The diverse group of panelists was moderated by Laut who has specialized in gender, women’s and South Asian studies. Together, they expanded the discussion to wide regions of the world. Speakers included UIUC’s law professor Margareth Etienne, doctoral student of human resource development Anne Namatsi Lutomia and comparative literature professor Dr. Rini Mehta. Etienne’s voice was unique and valuable as she explored how laws are constructed to criminalize gender-based violence; Lutomia’s contributions educated attendees with regard to African attitudes surrounding gender-based violence; and Mehta revealed how sociocultural systems like castes can impact the degree of targeting and the protection victims of gender-based violence experience in India.

Mindfully nuancing the discussion, Etienne, author of “Addressing Gender Based Violence in an International Context,” commented that gender-based violence has a broad definition as it does not strictly identify women as victims; it also encompasses crimes carried out against people who do not exhibit gender in the ways their societies expect them to, as seen, for example, in the 1999 film “Boys Don’t Cry.” Many hate crimes are committed not around the idea that a man is a man or a woman is a woman, but rather that a man isn’t masculine enough or a woman isn’t feminine enough to satisfy his/her society’s and peers’ expectations.

Lutomia, recipient of the Maria Pia Gratton Award, a fellowship meant to honor the memory of a victim of gender-based violence, shared that the practice of polygamy in Africa can make wives especially susceptible to gender-based violence. “We don’t have a law that is categorically against domestic violence,” she said, speaking of her native Kenya. Corrective rape, too, she intoned, carried out frequently within severely homophobic societies, is a damaging practice meant to punish, intimidate and terrorize people exhibiting sexual identity that falls outside of societal norms. Much of this violence, she highlighted, must be viewed through a post-colonial lens.

Mehta, whose academic work includes the 2011 documentary Post 498: Shades of Domestic Violence, introduced a variety of aggressions lesser known to the Western world, including the concept of “Love Jihad,” allegedly a deceptive practice of emotional manipulation designed to win converts to Islam. She also stated that “rape is more than a crime in South Asia. It is more of a phenomenon.” Calling this tendency a “pogrom,” Mehta pointed out that it is commonplace for one ethnic or religious group to target another and systematically murder its men or rape its women in an effort to humiliate, intimidate and demoralize. She, too, iterated that the legacy of colonialism colors the gender-based violence discourse.

Amid the brave, terrifying and undeniably contemporary comments, it was perhaps an audience member’s question that was the most compelling of all: “What is the origin of the need to control women that seems to cross borders, cultures and even time?” While gender-based violence is, again, not restricted to women, there is obvious, cross-cultural investment in a certain degree of conformity when it comes to the performance of one’s sexual identity. When people across the globe step outside of these norms, they frequently enter violently charged and threatening spaces. What is it, indeed, that makes us hurt each other in such deeply violent ways and what can we do about it? Please join our discussion by leaving a reply to this post. Visit the Chai Wai event lib guide and look for the International and Area Studies Library’s next event in the Chai Wai Series on conflicts in the Ukraine in February 2015.

jalebi

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Coming Soon: South Asia Comic Collection

I recently sat down with Mara Thacker, the Library’s South Asian Studies Librarian, to talk with her about one of the Library’s newest collections, the South Asia Comic Collection. The South Asia comics are “part of an initiative to develop a national specialized research resource for students, instructors, and scholars interested in these materials… [It] expands on the Library’s existing popular culture collection.” [i] The following post is an edited version of our interview.

South Asia Comics from the U of I Library

Clockwise from top Right: Samhita Arni and Moyna Chitrakar’s “Sita’s Ramayana,” Amar Chitra Katha’s “Mahabharata,” Shekhar Kapur’s “Devi vol. 2,” and Manjula Padmanabhan’s “Double Talk.”

When did the Library begin to collect South Asian comics? And why did you begin the collection?
This is a new project we declared in October 2012. We participate in a cooperative acquisitions program [ii] with the other South Asia librarians and people that participate in our professional organization. This past year, the project was to identify an area of specialization, declare that for your university, and commit to collecting these materials and to the that it is possible making them available. When I was looking at options for what Illinois could specialize in, comics seemed like a good choice because David Ward, in the Undergraduate Library, had approached me about Indian comics and as I investigated things I realized that there were not a lot of holdings in the U.S. that seemed to be easily available. I realized that it was an area that was really under collected on a national level, there was somebody who could partner [and] provide an extra little financial incentive, and also something niche enough that I think we could fully cover and start from the beginning.

Was the tie in the Undergraduate’s comic collection one of the main factors for why you started this collection?
It was certainly helpful. When you are picking an area of specialization like that, you have a lot of freedom to pick something that interests you and that you think is fun. I have a little bit of back ground in visual culture and popular culture studies, so I think comics are fascinating and a growing area of interests in the academy. But I had to have something that was budgetarily feasible, so having a partnership with the Undergraduate Library, knowing that there is a place for this collection to be housed, certainly helped. And if David Ward and the Undergraduate Library had said, ‘No, we can’t deal with the volume of this,’ or ‘No, we’re not interested,’ then I don’t know that I would have proceeded.

How big is the collection right now? Have you started collecting?
The comic industry in India is not huge. As I said that was one reason we selected that as an area because we could do some retrospective collecting and get a fair portion of what’s available. What we have so far, or most of what we have, I got on a buying trip to India. I went in January to February 2013, and I actually went to Comic Con in New Delhi and bought everything that was available, which wasn’t as much as you would think. I was also at the Delhi book fair and I bought the full run of Amar Chitra Katha comics. Actually, those are pretty widely held; they’re the one sort of anomaly of Indian comics, … but for some of the other comics, like Raj Comics and Diamond Comics, to name a few, they’re not necessarily widely available, so I picked up whatever was available at the book fair.

We have 371 Amar Chitra Katha comics from the buying trip, never mind what we may have already had. The 173 titles form Raj Comics, those are mostly in Hindi. We have 85 from miscellaneous publishers; those are often one-off graphic novels. And then we have 30 from Diamond Comics. There are a couple other publishers and character series that we hope to pick up as we go along.

So roughly 500 or so?
More than. I think just over 600. And we did have some stuff already that has come in over the years from other places, mostly graphic novels.

The comics that were already here, are you going to try to move them into the collection, house them all together? Or is it going to be spread out across the University libraries?
I haven’t decided if I’m going to move things that we have already bought or if it’s going to be moving forward a new policy. I know that everything we bought, starting in October, is going to go in the Undergraduate Library graphic novel and comic collection. We have talked about if we get some older comics and some rare comics, you know from the 60s, 70s, or earlier, it may be more appropriate to put them in Rare Books. But I’m not sure if it would be a mountain of work to try to identify everything that’s elsewhere and move it. That’s a decision to be made later.

We talked a little bit about what is in the collection already. You mentioned the Amar Chitra Katha Comics and those from Raj and Diamond, are they mainly graphic novels? Are they superhero comics? Are they political cartoons and comic strips? Are they all of the above?
All of the above. Raj Comics are superhero comics mostly. The Diamond Comics are more like the Archie and Jughead kind of thing in the sense that they are sort of family friendly and cutesy, but still on that pulpy paper. But then we’ve gotten quite a few graphic novel comics from Pop Cracker and Campfire, and those are more along the lines of Neil Gaiman and those sorts of U.S.-based graphic novels.

You mentioned before that some of the Raj Comics are in Hindi, are there other languages besides English and Hindi in the collection?
Right now just English and Hindi. We will expand to other languages as it becomes possible. The Amar Chitra Katha comics are available in a ton of the different languages of India and I think they could come with the cataloging done. But one of our issues is that we don’t have a huge amount of South Asian language expertise in cataloging right now. So processing things in languages other than English is more challenging. Even the Hindi is challenging, we just have a temporary person helping with that. And they’re not really in WorldCat, which is a problem.

Are you limiting the collection only to India for right now? Are you going to expand to other South Asian countries?
Hopefully, we can expand. I don’t know how big the comic industry is in other countries. I met a librarian from Pakistan that I asked about comics and I don’t think the industry is as large as it is in India, which is still a relative term, because compared to East Asia and the U.S. comics are still pretty small. It would be nice to have comics from all of the South Asian countries but India was sort of the low hanging fruit for a starting point.

How does the comic collection fit in with the rest of the South Asian collection?
In terms of popular culture items, we do have a pretty decent popular film collection for South Asia, mostly India and mostly Hindi, but also the other languages of India. So I think it fits in well in that regard and we also collect South Asian literature. Comics are that interesting middle ground between visual artifacts and textual artifacts so it fits in with the other things that we collect more generally in that way.

I know the Libguide gives a list of subject terms to search in the catalog, but it’s a little difficult to find them sometimes. Are you going to have some sort of designator especially for the Indian comics so that users can browse through them in the catalog?
I don’t know what subject term we would use. We talked about having some sort of subject or some sort of tag, but we’re not at that phase yet. Actually, all of this is taking a bit longer than I expected.

I just asked because when I was looking, I used, or tired to use, the subject terms from the Libguide and it was hard to find them.
Well most of them aren’t in there yet. Actually, nothing from the buying trip is in the catalog yet. I went to India, bought everything they had, brought it back, and realized that we have to get it into the catalog and they’re not in WorldCat. There is probably going to be some original cataloging involved. I’m not a cataloger, but other people don’t necessarily have the South Asia expertise, so it’s [difficult] trying to figure out how to make this collection findable. Luckily we had some protocols, as they figured things out through trial and error setting up the the graphic novel and comic collection for the English language materials, so we’ve been able to use that as a model, but we’ve also had to make specific decisions about the way these things should be grouped together.

Do you have a date that they might be available? Because until they’re in the catalog, users can’t access them, right?
We were hoping to have them out sometime in the Fall semester. I don’t know if that is going to happen. Once we give them [Cataloging] the instructions, that’s all well and good, but there’s still no one down there who speaks Hindi. I’m hoping that we can be pleasantly surprised, but it’s a lot of work to have sprung on them.

So changing tracks here, what kind of comics are you most interested in?
I enjoy the re-tellings of the Indian myths. The Devi comics were one of the ones I looked at when I was starting to kind of dip my toe in. I really like the artwork for those; they’re so aesthetically fun. I enjoy those and I think the Amar Chitra Katha and probably the Raj too. The language is a bit easier, the Hindi language, than it would be in a novel, so I think as a student of Hindi I enjoy those to try to improve my language skills. And I hope at some point I can get some of the Hindi students here to discover them.

What are your overall plans for the collection? Do you want to get every single Indian comic out there? Or do you just want to get the big ones and some of the more specialized comics?
Well, at this point, I think that the industry is small enough that it would be feasible to get almost everything. The retrospective stuff is going to be more challenging, at least in terms of getting complete sets. We’ve got all those Raj comics titles; I asked them for a complete set and … they handed me these giant bundles. I get them back [to the U.S.] and start going through them and I realize that they’re not complete when you look at the sequencing for the numbers. But … that was what they had. What I don’t know is how to get my hands on the things that weren’t included in those bundles. So the retrospective stuff, I anticipate being tricky. If there was a collector in India that would like bestow their collection from their childhood upon us that would be a miracle, but I don’t think that is going to happen.

Any other big plans for the collection? Do you want to start including them in the Hindi classes, like you mentioned earlier?
I think that would be pretty cool. I also think it would be interesting if we became a destination for people who are doing research in popular and visual culture. If they came here to use our comics or if we were able to send them through inter-library loan. I’ve been toying with the idea of inviting a speaker or doing some sort of event centered around the collection.

Having Hindi students be aware of it would be great. Having visual and popular culture scholars be aware of it would be great. But part of it too is that fact that, from what I can tell in all of my research, these things have not been comprehensively collected anywhere in North America. Different libraries have different pieces of things, but this is something that in terms of … the national collection, I think it’s an important contribution. Because other than Amar Chitra Katha, they just haven’t been collected and made accessible.

And I don’t think that it’s being done in India either. I think as with other types of popular culture items, it takes awhile to get the respect, I guess. I think comic studies and visual culture studies is pretty legitimate within the academy, but still I don’t think people think to hold onto and preserve and collect these things. Since comic culture isn’t as big in India as it is in Japan, or even Korea and China; I think it just hasn’t been collected.

If someone wanted to start reading Indian comics, where would you suggest they start? Is there any source material you would show them? Or just point them to the Libguide?
The Libguide would be a good starting point, because that will give you a pretty wide range of whatever is there. There is a graduate assistant at the Undergraduate Library who did some pretty deep searching and I did a lot of searching, too. Then together we put together as much of a bibliography as we could. Again there is not a lot out there, but there should be some good starting points there.

Any other points you want to highlight about the collection?
Just that I hope it will be available sooner rather than later. It’s been a very complex project. It’s started with ‘wouldn’t it be great if…’ and now it’s a lot of work. So it’s not all fun and games with a comic collection.

[i] South Asia Comic Collection. Libguide. http://uiuc.libguides.com/southasiancomics
[ii] South Asia Cooperative Collection Development Initiative. 2012 Summary Report and Outcomes. http://www.library.wisc.edu/guides/SoAsia/2012Report.pdf

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