About the Talk:

A topic as contentious as men’s right activism offers a wide range of methodological challenges: does the topic undermine feminist achievement and validate masculinist reactionary opinions against the feminist cause? Does the researcher’s ethnographic duties stand in conflict with their ideological positions? Will studying it come at the cost of loss of feminist friends and allies? Dr. Basu will talk about how she navigated methodological challenges of disclosure, identification, interpretation, and alliance, and explore the possibilities of ethnography and, more broadly, the larger landscape of research methodology itself.

About the Speaker:

Srimati Basu is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. She has an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. from Ohio State University in Cultural Studies/ Anthropology/ Women’s Studies, and her teaching, research and community work interests include Legal Anthropology, Women in Development, Feminist Jurisprudence, South Asia, Feminist Theory and Methodology, Work, Property and Violence Against Women. She has written ethnographic studies of of feminist legal reform, marriage, courts, mediation, rape and domestic violence law, She’s a recipient of the 2013-14 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship, following which she began her fieldwork on men’s rights activists in India.