According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (online), the first known use of the term ‘feminism’–
On Saturday, February 15, 2003, I was part of a 15-coach convoy from Portsmouth to London, UK.
As an academic, I often share with students my writings that are related to the courses I teach. That was not the case with our educators when I was a student in the Department of English at Dhaka University. The reason was not because there were no writers among our teachers.
Writer and academic Elora Shehabuddin has lived in a number of countries and had a fair share of exposure to multicultural environments. Her lived experience must have proved helpful in bringing in a comprehensive perspective to the discussion in Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism (University of California Press 2021; University Press Limited 2022).
Alice Beck Kehoe (1934-) is a family friend, and I have her permission to use her first name in short for this essay. After reading Alice’s autobiography Girl Archaeologist: Sisterhood in a Sexist Profession (2022), Raudah, my wife, recommended the book to me with confidence that I would love it.
Writers and intellectuals are obligated to stir moral indignation at gross injustices and the plight of the masses.
Writer, statesman and educationalist Humayun Kabir (1906-69) was born in Komarpur near Faridpur town. The childhood of this cosmopolitan intellectual was spent in a rural culture.
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s (1880-1932) ancestors came from Tabriz in Iran to settle down in this region. During her lifetime, Bangladesh as an independent country did not exist. We call her a Bangladeshi writer because she was born in Pairaband, Rangpur, in what is now Bangladesh. However, the site of her activism was Calcutta.
In early September 2019, I made a weeklong trip to the UK to present conference papers at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of East Anglia (UEA).
When my niece Mubasshira and her husband Morsed told me that they had moved from East London to Kent, I had little idea of the area in which they relocated. Prior to my two-week trip to the UK this year, they gave me their address which contained the name of
Abdul Quadir (1906-84) was a poet-prosodist, essayist, editor, journalist, literary critic, bibliophile and collector of literary works. He
In a previous article titled “Rokeya and Woolf: Souls That Have Lived” (Daily Star, 8 Dec 2018), I discussed similarities and differences between Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).
There are some amazing similarities between the Bengali writer Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) and her English counterpart Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) that will make you wonder whether every great soul that has ever lived experiences the same dimension of reality in different shapes.
I enjoyed reading my teacher and mentor Fakrul Alam's “The Literary Club of 18th-Century London” (Daily Star, 20 August 2018). Referring to our age-old practice of having literary addas (chatting circles) and London's “The Club” better known as “Literary Club” which Samuel Johnson (1709-84) and Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) founded in 1764, he pointed to a comparable literary tradition of Bengal and Britain.
In her writing, she makes it clear that men, who have denied women equal opportunities, should take a greater role in establishing gender justice.
In Bangladesh, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880 – 1932) is highly regarded as a literary, cultural icon and reformist writer who
