I must admit I have never read the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, nor am I familiar with his life and writings. Kei Haruta’s study of the two thinkers—Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin—drew me in primarily because I have remained an ardent reader of Arendt’s work, having been deeply benefitted from and influenced by her thoughts on totalitarianism, the essential crises of the human condition, the concept of political violence, and what she terms as the ‘banality of evil’.
In classic Bengali fiction, the kitchen is a central site for conflict and community bonding.
November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence which goes until December 10, Human Rights Day.
One does not need to remember Rabindranath on the occasion of the anniversary of his death—22 Srabon or August 7 to be precise.
Over the last two semesters, my course on South Asian writing at both the undergraduate and graduate level begins with Shahidul Zahir’s Jibon O Rajnoitik Bastobata (Life and Political Reality, translated by V Ramaswamy and Shahroza Nahreen).
One of the movements which helped accelerate the Liberation War of Bangladesh was the Mass Uprising of 1969.
When Gayatri Spivak ends her groundbreaking essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) with a definitive statement “the subaltern cannot speak”, a section of literary criticism took that dictum literally—accepting the “cannot” to represent mutism or an inability to speak.
As we close the curtains on the first month of the new year and step into the second, here at Star Books and Literature, we are thinking back on the year we had.
I must admit I have never read the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, nor am I familiar with his life and writings. Kei Haruta’s study of the two thinkers—Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin—drew me in primarily because I have remained an ardent reader of Arendt’s work, having been deeply benefitted from and influenced by her thoughts on totalitarianism, the essential crises of the human condition, the concept of political violence, and what she terms as the ‘banality of evil’.
In classic Bengali fiction, the kitchen is a central site for conflict and community bonding.
November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence which goes until December 10, Human Rights Day.
One does not need to remember Rabindranath on the occasion of the anniversary of his death—22 Srabon or August 7 to be precise.
Over the last two semesters, my course on South Asian writing at both the undergraduate and graduate level begins with Shahidul Zahir’s Jibon O Rajnoitik Bastobata (Life and Political Reality, translated by V Ramaswamy and Shahroza Nahreen).
One of the movements which helped accelerate the Liberation War of Bangladesh was the Mass Uprising of 1969.
When Gayatri Spivak ends her groundbreaking essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) with a definitive statement “the subaltern cannot speak”, a section of literary criticism took that dictum literally—accepting the “cannot” to represent mutism or an inability to speak.
As we close the curtains on the first month of the new year and step into the second, here at Star Books and Literature, we are thinking back on the year we had.
No amount of activism is enough to bring an end to gender-based violence when women’s and girls’ lives are considered less than that of their male counterparts.
This week, then, we're thinking: music and books, music and literature. In print and online, we're dreaming in tunes, dancing with words, daring to merge the two.
