CSSR Global South Speaker Series: Dr. Sayendri Panchadhyayi

Limits and liminalities of gendered widowhood and ageing in a sacred geography

Friday, February 16, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EST
Online Location

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Abstract:

Sacrosanct for Vaishnavite worship, Nabadwip much like Varanasi, Vrindavan and Kashi is a site of ageing widows generally found flanking the temple gates in their wait for alms, tilak mashis dabbing chandan (sandalwood paste) on forehead, and those within the temple premises immersed in devotional performance of kirtan (devotional music in praise of Krishna). In their tryst and through their inhabitation, older widows who were abandoned and fled, local residents or pilgrims reconfigures the layered geography of Nabadwip. Widowhood in South Asia has evolved out of the extant indigenous inequalities, cultural repertoire of widowhood as a performance, and conundrum of ambivalent intergenerational relations at the cusp of adaptation and disenfranchisement. Framing arguments through the prism of feminist geography, lifecourse approach and cultural gerontology, the talk sifts through and glean from ethnographic findings to establish that (a) widowhood is embodied, emplaced and relational and (b) widowhood penalty is worsened by the intersectional grid of gender, age and poverty.

Bio: 

Dr. Sayendri Panchadhyayi is an interdisciplinary sociologist with a PhD in sociology. She is interested in the themes of critical gerontology, sociology of care and lifecourse, temporality, death and bereavement, and policy research. 

How to attend:

This event will be held on Zoom. To receive the Zoom meeting link for this event, please RSVP at the top of this page.  

Sponsored by Center for Social Science Research Global South Hub.