Professor Kate Nash,Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London – ‘Women’s rights, distant suffering and neo-imperialism’

Gender ARC and Global Women’s Studies at NUI Galway

Are pleased to invite you to a Reception & Public Lecture “Women’s rights, distant suffering and neo-imperialism” Professor Kate Nash

Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Abstract: Earlier this year the film ‰Û÷India’s Daughter’ was banned in India: it is illegal to show it there. It is widely agreed that at least part of the Indian government’s reasoning was that it is a form of imperialism. In responding to the ban, the Israeli born, UK-based director of the film, Leslee Udwin, claimed that, as a global citizen, she had the right to make it, and to criticise Indian society. Justifying imperialism using the rhetoric of human rights has a long and continuing history. At the same time, however, the question of how we should respond to representations of people suffering in other countries cannot be avoided. If neo-imperialism is the state of mind that ‰Û÷They need us to achieve rights; while we didn’t need them’, what can we learn from the film and its reception about women’s rights, distant suffering, and neo-imperialism?

Kate Nash is a leading political sociologist whose work focuses on the nexus of human rights, politics and culture. Professor Nash has been with the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths since 1999 where she teaches on the sociology of human rights; cultural politics; political sociology; feminist theory; citizenship; social movements; and equality and diversity. She earned a degree in Sociology at City University as a mature student, completing in 1990, and then a PhD in the Department of Government at Essex University, finishing in 1995. She is Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy at Goldsmiths, and a Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. In 2010, Professor Nash she was Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research, New York and Vincent Wright Professor at Sciences Po, Paris. Kate Nash is a highly-regarded, pioneering thinker on the sociology and politics of human rights in a context of globalisation. She is author of: The Political Sociology of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, July 2015); Contemporary Political Sociology: globalization, politics, power (Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and The Cultural Politics of Human Rights: Comparing the US and UK (Cambridge University Press, 2009). See: http://www.gold.ac.uk/sociology/staff/nash/

To RSVP and for more information: Gillian Browne, Global Women’s Studies, gillian.browne@nuigalway.ie