Seuty Sabur, Assistant Professor of Anthropology presented her paper “Women’s Agency within Left Political Parties and the Birth of Feminist Organizations in Bangladesh” in the panel ‘Gender and Activism in Cold War Era East Pakistan’ in the 43rd Annual Conference on South Asia. The conference was hosted by the Center for South Asia at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, held from October 15-19, 2014. This paper explores the kinds of agency and power these women enjoyed within the formal political parties during 1960s and 1970s, the factors that led them to form separate feminist organizations, the roles of politically arranged marriages in creating a new hierarchy within the party and finally, the implications of these histories--of these feminists, the organizations they were involved in, the ideologies they accepted, contested, rejected--for the women’s movement in Bangladesh today.
Assistant Professor Samia Huq presented her work entitled “A Nation's Secular Goals and Muslim Ethos: Muslim, Bengali Women's Agency in East Pakistan” in the South Asia Conference at University of Wisconsin, Madison during the same time. The paper argues that women’s participation in the cultural sphere during 60’s and 70’s, which laid the foundations of the emerging nation, did so by creating a “modern-folk,” straddling between the religious and secular while pushing the limits of expected gender norms. The paper highlights the nexus between women-nation-and-cultural-production by placing another nexus, that of the religious-secular, at its center. An understanding of the dynamics for 1960s East Pakistan when East Bengalis were striving for sovereignty will allow a wrestling with the trajectory of the concepts of nation, religion, secularism, and highlight women’s role in creating them, especially as they remain highly contested in contemporary Bangladesh.
The briefing session of the Hult Prize at BRAC University event took place on the 22nd of October 2014 at the BRAC University Auditorium. It was organized with support from the BRAC Business School and the Global Affairs Forum of BRAC University. The main agenda of the session was to introduce students of BRAC University to the prestigious Hult Prize competition which is considered the largest student competition in the world and is organized in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative. Dr. Shahidur Rahman, Associate Professor of the Economics and Social Sciences department was invited to share his thoughts on the integration of welfare programmes into business.
Adnan M. S. Fakir was invited to attend and present at the first 'Shape South Asia’ summit being organized by Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum at Ahmadabad, India. The theme of the summit centered around Gandhian philosophy commemorating his 145th birth anniversary. The aim of the conference was to address common challenges and explore opportunities to tackle prevailing problems pertinent to cultural diversity of South Asia. Potential collaborative projects between South Asian countries was discussed and proposed.
Adnan M. S. Fakir's talk at the TEDx event on his upcoming documentary film, "Finding Bangladesh 2," which focuses on the histories, mythologies and legends of Bangladesh, catered mainly for the younger generations has been published on Youtube and can be accessed at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONvyJ1RYSfI. TEDx provides progressive thinkers and proactive doers an international platform to share their ideas in order to enhance local communities.