The Annual Kleh Lecture: Carceral Journeys of Feminist Activism: Global Patterns and Rape Law Reforms in India

Monday, November 18th
12:45pm – 2:00pm
Boston University School of Law
765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215
Barristers Hall, First Floor

Lunch will be served in Barristers Hall starting at noon, please register.

Please join us for the Annual Kleh Lecture where Professor Dash will critically examine the transfer of carceral feminist politics from the Global North to the Global South and its impact on feminist responses to violence against women in India. She will draw connections between the Anglo-American dominance feminist understanding of sexuality, as rooted in male domination and female subordination, and Indian mainstream feminist activism around rape law reform.  She will argue that such an understanding, which centers on single-axis victimization along gender lines, obscures issues raised by feminists from other marginalized groups in both regions. For instance, in India, the concerns of Dalit and Muslim feminists, particularly regarding the participation of upper-caste Hindu women in caste-based and majoritarian Hindutva violence against religious minorities, are largely absent from mainstream feminist agenda. Given this backdrop, the Indian feminist reliance solely on criminal law to address violence against women has several unintended consequences. To illustrate this, she will highlight the conservative, patriarchal framework within which criminal law operates in India, as well as its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities.

About the Speaker

Preeti Pratishruti Dash is a legal academic, whose research interests lie in criminal law and policy. Pratishruti Dash is currently pursuing a PhD in Law at the University of Cambridge, where she is a Gates-Cambridge Scholar. Her doctoral work focuses on the downsides of punitive approaches to sexual violence India.

Professor Pratishruti Dash has served as an Assistant Professor at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, India teaching courses on criminal law and leading seminars on violence against women. She has also worked as a research scholar at Project 39A, National Law University Delhi, where she worked and published on capital sentencing in India.

Pratishruti Dash’s academic qualifications include an LLB from National Law University, Odisha, where she was a gold medalist. She also holds LLM from Harvard Law School under the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowshp, and an MSc in criminology from the University of Oxford, where she was awarded the Roger Hood Prize and the Routledge Prize for her outstanding performance and dissertation.

Beyond her professional endeavors, Pratishruti Dash enjoys traveling, reading post-colonial and historical fiction, and exploring different cuisines.

Established in 2011 as part of the William & Patricia Kleh Visiting Professorship. The Kleh lecture is delivered by the Kleh Visiting Professor, who teaches one or more courses during their semester visiting BU Law. The Professorship and Lecture is made possibly by the generosity of William Kleh (’71) and his wife Patty.

Boston University strives to be accessible, inclusive and diverse in our facilities, programming and academic offerings. Your experience in this event is important to us. If you have a disability (including but not limited to learning or attention, mental health, concussion, vision, mobility, hearing, physical or other health related), require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason please contact Elizabeth Clancey (lawevent@bu.edu) by March 25th, to discuss your needs.