Events Calendar

Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate recent works from Brady G’Sell and Meena Khandelwal, faculty in the University of Iowa Department of Anthropology and the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Program. After the reading, Elana Buch, associate professor of anthropology, will join G’Sell and Khandelwal for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Light refreshments will follow.

7-8:30 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025
Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City
RSVP

Brady G’Sell, assistant professor of anthropology, will read from her recent book, Reworking Citizenship: Race, Gender, and Kinship in South Africa. In 2021, South Africa’s protests highlighted ongoing poverty and marginalization, especially among women. G’Sell explores how historical resistance to racial and gendered marginalization informs current struggles, revealing efforts to reshape political institutions. She proposes “relational citizenship,” emphasizing social and kinship relations amidst declining wage labor and weakening state support.

"Reworking Citizenship is a brilliant investigation into the relational basis of political belonging. Simultaneously a deep analysis of a particular place (a port neighborhood of Durban, South Africa) as well as a development of theories of citizenship and processes of kinship, G'Sell brings an anthropologist's eye to history and a historian's eye to anthropology."
—Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Carleton College

Meena Khandelwal, associate professor of anthropology, will from her recent book, Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India. Despite efforts to promote clean cookstoves in India, the traditional mud chulha remains popular. Based on research in Rajasthan, Khandelwal argues that the chulha persists because it offers women control and flexibility. Khandelwal highlights the complex reasons behind the chullha’s continued use and proposes a new framework for understanding development and technology.

“Cookstove Chronicles offers a sophisticated, nuanced, and complex argument about why women in India continue to use the chulha despite extensive development efforts encouraging them to stop. Grounded in feminist insights and critical approaches to technology and development, this book is long overdue.”—Jade S. Sasser, author of On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change