Geography Colloquium Series

Performing Terror, Mediating Religion:Indian Cinema and the Politics

of National Belonging

Sunera ThobaniInstitute for Gender, Race, Sexuality & Social Justice

University of British Columbia

Thursday, September 12th, 4 pmin Room 201 of the Department of Geography

In 2002, the Indian state of Gujarat irrupted in violence against Muslims that left at least 2,000 dead, tens of thousands homeless, and hundreds of women raped and assaulted. This talk examines what the Gujarat genocide reveals about the violence that underpins the Indian nation-state and its particular forms of reli-gious and gendered identities. The talk also examines the symbiotic rela-tion between the nation-state and the Indian film industry, which plays a critical role in mediating forms of national belonging.

Sunera Thobani is Associate Professor at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her research focuses on critical race, postcolonial and feminist theory, globalization, citizen-ship, migration, Muslim women, the War on Terror, and media. Her book, Exalt-ed Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada, was published by the University of Toronto Press (2007) and she has also co-edited Asian Women: Interconnections (Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2005) and States of Race: Critical Race Feminist Theory for the 21st Century (Between the Lines, 2010).

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