11 December 2014
Thursdays, 4 p.m.


Institute for Theatre Studies
Freie Universität Berlin
Grunewaldstr. 35
12165 Berlin-Steglitz

On the occasion of the Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW) based in Mumbai, India, receiving the prestigious 2014 Prince Claus Awards for cultural action in the Netherlands, founding member and director of SPARROW, Dr. C.S. Lakshmi, will give a talk on the work of feminist archiving in an Indian context.

This presentation will focus on oral history and the collective efforts to set up a women's archives in India with oral history as the main anchor project. The talk will elaborate on SPARROW's perception of oral history, their methods of using oral history in general and specifically the work conducted in the framework of the Global Feminisms project and the ten oral history documentaries SPARROW produced to understand women's scholarship and action and explore the questions of self, identity, ways  of seeing, ways of speaking and ways of maintaining silence.

Dr. C.S. Lakshmi is also a well-known figure in Tamil literature writing under the pen name of Ambai. At the end of the presentation, she will read excerpts from her latest work in Tamil.

The lecture is organized by Sruti Bala in cooperation with the Center for the Promotion of Women’s and Gender Studies (ZEFG).