“Gay Bombay” Talk Today
Parmesh Shahani, TED and MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow, and author of “Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India” (2008)
Tuesday, November 8, 2-3.30 pm Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW)
Parmesh Shahani is not your usual academic. He runs a newly formed corporate funded ideas lab that examines the nature of modernity in contemporary India. He also has a parallel life in which he travels all over India as Editor at Large for Verve, India’s leading fashion and lifestyle magazine, and tops lists like 2010 CNN list of “Mumbai’s coolest queers”. In his talk (accompanied by feature and documentary film clips), Parmesh will reflect on the changes taking place on the ground for LBGT people in India, set against the context of the larger national changes that the country is going through. Drawing on his ethnographic research within an online-offline gay community in the city of Bombay, Parmesh will mull over questions of identity, community and the national imagination. He will also read excerpts from his book.
Co-sponsored by GW’s English Department and Women’s Studies Program.
