Date and Time:
Thursday, February 29, 2024 from 5:00pm-7:00pm (PST)
5:00pm-5:30pm (PST) Reception
5:30pm-7:00pm (PST) Talk and Discussion
Location:
xʷθəθiqətəm (Place of Many Trees)
Liu Institute for Global Issues, 6476 NW Marine Drive, UBC
*There is also an option to watch the event virtually. The lecture will be live-streamed.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration required via https://forms.gle/y3qKTzLXpFAqKHUq8
UBC Asian Studies welcomes Dr. Harjant Gill to UBC! This event has been sponsored by the Onkarbir Singh Toor Memorial Punjabi Studies Enhancement Fund.
Co-sponsored by CISAR and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality & Social Justice, with many thanks to our community partners The Surrey Art Gallery, Sher Vancouver, and Punjabi Market!
In Indian Punjab, a culture dominated almost entirely by men, learning to become a man is a process fraught with violence. Disillusioned by lofty promises for power and control, Gill’s research shows how Punjabi men contend with patriarchy: by submitting to it, by attempting to transgress it, by migrating away from it, or by coming undone by it. Based on long-term fieldwork research and documentary filmmaking, Gill takes readers deep inside men’s worlds to show how on one hand, masculinity is produced through pervasive violence, on the other, it’s underlined with intimacy and tenderness men express freely towards each other without the fear of homophobic ridicule. In his forthcoming book, Gill posits an indictment of patriarchy as a system that not only oppresses women but also constricts men’s choices regarding their intimate and sexual lives. Gill makes a convincing argument for why men everywhere must divest from patriarchy if they don’t wish for their lives to be defined by relentless conflict and violence.
Speaker
Harjant Gill is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Towson University. His research examines the intersections of masculinity, modernity, transnational migration, and popular culture in India. Gill is also an award-winning filmmaker and has made several ethnographic films that have screened at international film festivals and on television channels worldwide including BBC World News, Doordarshan (Indian National TV) and PBS. Gill is also the recipient of the Point Foundation Scholarship, Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies Performing Arts Fellowship, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars’ Career Enhancement Fellowship, and the Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship. He is also the president of Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival (2024 – 2026) and co-edited the Multimodal Anthropologies section of the journal American Anthropologist (2017-2020).