India
Gender and Development in Northern India
July 12-25, 2008
Itinerary
This 14-day seminar begins and ends in Delhi and includes travel to Agra, Jaipur, and Amritsar and Chandigarh in the State of Punjab.
Seminar Fee
CIEE Member: $3,250 Non-Member: $3,450
Academic Content (please note this is tentative and subject to change)
Lectures
- Understanding Gender Relations
- Women and the Law
- Discussion on the Impact of Development on Crafts Persons
- Women’s Property Rights – in Law and in Practice
- Indian Women - Changing Realities
- Panel Discussion with faculty at Punjab University
- Crime Against Women
- Discussion with women activists in Jaipur
- Indian Women Writers
Co-curricular Site Visits & Field Trips
- City tour of New Delhi and Delhi World Heritage monuments
- Dilli Haat crafts bazaar
- National Museum
- Amritsar: Golden Temple, principal centre of worship for Sikhs, Jalianwala Bagh Memorial, and the Indian-Pakistan border
- Visit to village Dera Bassi, Punjab, to meet with women’s self help group
- The Taj Mahal
- Jaipur: Fatehpur Sikri , Emperor Akbar’s capital city, Amber Fort, Jantar Mantar Observatory, and the City Palace
- Visit a women’s police station
Rationale
This seminar will allow participants to see common threads in the midst of wide disparities, and witness how today’s dramatic economic and demographic changes in India are affecting women and families. Travel to diverse geographic settings; talk to villagers who despite living on the fringes are developing a new awareness of the changes that impact their lives; meet educated women who have overcome obstacles to succeed in their professions; talk to female activists fighting for the legal rights of women and children. An orientation in Delhi allows access to scholars and researchers focusing on these issues and for discussions with a wide range of people. The group will journey through northern India to see a kaleidoscope of changing views of the country and its people. These two weeks include Jaipur—visiting development programs and rural women social workers—and Punjab—a contrast with Rajasthan in rural prosperity, and yet a state where agricultural prosperity has affected women and female feticide is at a high level. Participants will travel to Agra with an historian to see one of the most spectacular monuments to a woman—the Taj Mahal.
Host Institution
The ERC Trust, a non-profit charitable trust, hosts this seminar. Among its many activities, ERC has undertaken projects for the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the Friedbert Ebert Stiftung Foundation, and a countrywide Diversity Initiative funded by the Ford Foundation which coordinates projects in over fifty colleges and five universities in India. The Trust works largely with undergraduate students and faculty and conducts teacher training and student workshops. The lectures are arranged in collaboration with Punjab University, Chandigarh.
Seminar Leadership
Dr. Sharada Nayak has spent more than thirty years in the field of multicultural education, first as a curriculum specialist teaching about India, then as Executive Director of the U.S. Educational Foundation in India, which administers the Fulbright exchange program. She then founded the Educational Resources Centre Trust, and continues to work in training teachers and students in India and abroad towards a better understanding and appreciation of the diverse cultures of India. With the ERC Trust she develops diversity programs in Indian colleges and also administers study abroad programs for U.S. student and faculty groups that visit India every year. This will be be Dr. Nayak’s fifth IFDS India seminar. In 2002 she was awarded a Doctorate in Humane Letters, honoris causa, by St. Lawrence University, New York.
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