“The Intersections of Caste and Gender in South India” with Rekha Raj

Zoom registration.

What lessons in intersectionality does the context of Dalit women’s politics in south India hold for us? Rekha Raj will speak about her pathbreaking research on Dalit women’s politics in Kerala, and the challenges of shaping intersectional politics in a society like Kerala’s, where the assumption of a “post-caste” enlightened society presents unique challenges for Dalit and minoritarian mobilization. Raj will draw on her formative role in Kerala’s Dalit feminist and queer movements— as an early or founding member of organizations including the Panchami Dalit Women’s Collective, Utharakalam, a leading digital platform for Dalit Bahujan and other dissident writings, the Kerala Queer Pride March collective, and Sahayatrika, a community organization for queer and trans people assigned female at birth.

Raj is a Dalit feminist scholar-activist from Kerala, south India, with over two decades of experience in shaping intersectional praxis and theory around Dalit women’s political interventions and lived experience. She is currently a recipient of the Kerala Chief Minister’s Nava Kerala Postdoctoral Fellowship.