Wednesday, July 10th, 2019
12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
Chung-wen Shih Conference Room, Suite 503
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW, Washington, District Of Columbia 20052
The Sigur Center for Asian Studies would like to cordially invite you to a discussion with Fulbright Visiting Scholar Navnita Behera on why critical pedagogues in International Relations have thus far resulted in limited outcomes.
This seminar grapples with the need to foreground the diversity of local contexts when developing critical pedagogies in international relations. The foundational bases of Euro-centrism have persisted in this realm, despite the growing sway of critical theories in IR. Professor Behera will draw upon teaching experiences of faculty in different parts of the world especially—though not exclusively—in the Global South, to show the disjuncture between the Euro-centric textbook knowledge and diverse ground life realities of the students. The idea is to explore the role of classroom teaching practices in this context.
Can we make our classrooms into a site of knowledge creation instead of merely as knowledge reproduction?
Guest Speaker:
Navnita Chadha Behera is a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University and a Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. She is also Vice President of the International Studies Association (2019-2020) and an Honorary Director of Institute for Research on India and International Studies. Earlier, she has been a Visiting Fellow at University of Warsaw (2015), University of Uppsala (2012), University of Bologna and the Central European University (2010), and the Brookings Institution (2001-2002).
Professor Behera has published widely in India and abroad. Her book on Demystifying Kashmir (Brookings Press, 2006) topped the non-fiction charts in India. Her other books include India Engages the World (Editor, Oxford University Press: 2013), International Relations in South Asia: Search for an Alternative Paradigm (Editor, Sage: 2008), Gender, Conflict and Migration (Editor, Sage: 2006) and State, Identity and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh (Manohar, 2002). Her research interests include International Relations Theory, Knowledge Systems and the Global South, and International Politics of South Asia especially issues of War, Conflict & Political Violence, Gender Studies, and the Kashmir Conflict.
This event is free and open to the media.
