National Seminar on Women's Spaces, Women's voices in Mumbai

The efforts of women to integrate economic pressures, exigencies of employment, exposure to a vast array of other perspectives and cultures through globalisation and rapidly-burgeoning information technology have been articulated and represented in a variety of genres–the visual arts, film, and literature.  As part of the continuing series of Mumbai-themed seminars being hosted at Sophia College over the last few years, the Sophia Centre for Women’s Studies and Development in collaboration with the Departments of English and Mass Media, Sophia College, and the Social Communications Media Department, Sophia Polytechnic, is conducting an interdisciplinary seminar on the theme of Women’s Spaces, Women’s Voices in Mumbai at the Sophia Bhabha Auditorium on Friday, 6th and Saturday, 7th January 2012. 

The seminar is open to students and faculty of Mumbai colleges as well as the general public.  The sessions feature papers by scholars from various academic disciplines and practitioners in the fields of art and literature. These include sessions devoted to Women in Literature, Women in Art and a historical investigation into the spaces allocated to and claimed by women in Mumbai. As with the previous seminars, the organisers hope to expose students and faculty to emerging fields and to areas of research and thinking beyond the limits of the prescribed syllabus.  This year an added dimension is that an entire session has been devoted to student presentations, both on video and as paper presentations. This offers students the experience of working on these topics with academic rigour, while student participants of the seminar will be inspired by seeing what their peers have achieved.

In addition to the academic sessions, we have four panel discussions – Women in the Newsroom; Women using New Media for art, business and activism; Women in Documentary Film; and Women making Feature Films featuring achievers in these spaces like Kiran Rao, Bishakha Dutta and Paromita Vohra.

Among the attractions of the event is a photography exhibition by the alumnae of the Social Communications Media Department, Sophia Polytechnic, many of who are professional photographers. Additionally, Vacha, an NGO focussing on women and adolescent girls, will be displaying an exhibition of photographs taken by adolescent girls living in bastis. As a special feature, Sanjukta Wagh and her troup will present a dance performance related to the theme of the conference on the evening of the 6^th of January.