Political Violence & Oral Histories: Presenting the Archive of Sri Lankan Tamil Feminist Dissent (VIRTUAL)

Friday, September 30th

11am to 12:15pm

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Co-sponsored by the South Asian American Digital Archive

Join the PublicsLab and South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) as we celebrate the launch of the oral history collection “Tamil Feminist Liberation: An Archive of What Could Be.” This oral history collection is one of the first attempts to document the legacies of feminist dissent in the Sri Lankan Tamil community. Sri Lanka was home to one of the longest civil wars in modern history, reaching a bloody climax in May 2009, where tens of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians were massacred by government forces. Enforced disappearances, acts of genocide, torture, and internecine assassinations continue to reverberate in today’s ‘post-war’ era as Sri Lanka faces the worst economic crisis in its postcolonial history. The purpose of this oral history collection is to document the transformative and liberatory potential of a Tamil feminist politics when practiced across political and social difference while faced with the adversities of armed and structural violence.

Join us as we examine what a feminist politics, practiced in the context of Sri Lankan Tamil political struggle, can teach us about facilitating transformation in today’s global era of rising fascism and sea levels. This virtual launch will include a panel of project advisors and interviewees. Panelists include: Sharika Thiranagama, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University; Mahendran Thiruvarangan, CUNY alumnus and Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Jaffna University in Sri Lanka; Meenadchi, family constellation practitioner and instructor in decolonial non-violent communication; YaliniDream, interdisciplinary performance artist; and Aanjali Allegakoen, MA/PhD candidate in American Studies at William & Mary University. This virtual event will be followed by an in-person workshop taking place in early November.

 

All out for Abortion Access! Organizing at CUNY and Beyond (IN-PERSON AT THE PEOPLE’S FORUM)

Saturday, 15 October

12-5pm

Co-sponsored by CUNY for Abortion Rights and the Center for the Study of Women and Society. Please note that this event will be held at The People’s Forum, 320 W 37th St.

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The PublicsLab and CUNY for Abortion Rights welcome you to an in-person gathering to learn and strategize with the movement for safe, legal, and free abortion access. In an opening panel, breakout sessions, and a concluding assembly, we will exchange lessons between organizers, scholars, and frontline workers. All participants will emerge from this event with connections and tangible skills to contribute to the urgent struggle for reproductive justice in New York and beyond.

Intentions for the day include:

• Hear firsthand accounts of recent abortion rights victories in Latin America and Ireland.
• Gain insight from Black liberation analyses on bodily autonomy.
• Build bridges between abortion care inside and clinic defense outside.
• Activate media skills to document, educate, and disseminate information.
• Strategize how to expand this struggle in our workplaces and universities.

A full schedule for the day, as well as speaker names and bios, is available at our website.