We are pleased to announce the publication of South Asian Feminisms edited by Ania Loomba and Ritty Lukose (Duke University Press, 2012). This volume arose out of an international conference by the same name, which was organized by Professors Loomba and Lukose and co-sponsored by the Alice Paul Center in 2008.

Description
During the past forty years, South Asia has been the location and the focus of dynamic, important feminist scholarship and activism. In this collection of essays, prominent feminist scholars and activists build on that work to confront pressing new challenges for feminist theorizing and practice. Examining recent feminist interventions in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, they address feminist responses to religious fundamentalism and secularism; globalization, labor, and migration; militarization and state repression; public representations of sexuality; and the politics of sex work. Their essays attest to the diversity and specificity of South Asian locations and feminist concerns, while also demonstrating how feminist engagements in the region can enrich and advance feminist theorizing globally.

Contributors: Flavia Agnes, Anjali Arondekar, Firdous Azim, Anannya Bhattacharjee, Laura Brueck, Angana P. Chatterji, Malathi de Alwis, Toorjo Ghose, Amina Jamal, Ratna Kapur, Lamia Karim, Ania Loomba, Ritty A. Lukose, Vasuki Nesiah, Sonali Perera, Atreyee Sen, Mrinalini Sinha, Ashwini Sukthankar

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Arising out of an international conference on Gender, War, and Militarism organized by Shannon Lundeen and sponsored by the Alice Paul Center in 2007, conference presenter Laura Sjoberg co-edited the volume, Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives (Praeger, 2010).

This compelling, interdisciplinary compilation of essays documents the extensive, intersubjective relationships between gender, war, and militarism in 21st-century global politics.

Militarization pervades everyday life, and gender pervades militarization. The statement may be surprising, but if accepted as fact, it suggests that understanding the role of women in 21st-century, post-9/11 military conflicts necessitates analysis of the gendering of those conflicts and the militaries (and nonstate groups) engaged in them.

Feminist scholars have long contended that war and militarism are fundamentally gendered. Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives provides empirical evidence, theoretical innovation, and interdisciplinary conversation on the topic, while explicitly—and uniquely—considering the links between gender, war, and militarism. Essentially an interdisciplinary conversation between scholars studying gender in political science, anthropology, and sociology, the essays here all turn their attention to the same questions. How are war and militarism gendered?

Seventeen innovative explanations of different intersections of the gendering of global politics and global conflict examine the theoretical relationship between gender, militarization, and security; the deployment of gender and sexuality in times of conflict; sexual violence in war and conflict; post-conflict reconstruction; and gender and militarism in media and literary accounts of war. Together, these essays make a coherent argument that reveals that, although it takes different forms, gendering is a constant feature of 21st-century militarism.

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In 2005, in collaboration with the Slought Foundation, the Alice Paul Center published the book, Ex-Cities by Hélène Cixous, edited by Aaron Levy & Jean-Michel Rabaté.

“Ex-Cities," a new release in the Contemporary Artist Series at Slought Books, arises from a shared concern for displacement and exile in the work of Hélène Cixous and British artist Maria Chevska. Visual documentation of “Vera’s Room,” Chevska’s installation in the galleries, is interspersed throughout Cixous’ text exploring the relation of art and literature to cities and their destruction. This bilingual publication includes a companion audio CD as well as a foreword by Eric Prenowitz and contributions by editors Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabaté. The companion CD is derived from a reading by Cixous at Slought Foundation in October 2005 (here for more information). Co-published with the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Pennsylvania; translations by Laurent Milesi.

This publication, and the exhibition from which it is derived, was made possible in part through the generous financial support of the British Council USA; the Mission du livre program of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

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