Workshop Descriptions
Document 1CASTE IN LITERATURE : Two Views of Social Mobility: Widows and Untouchables in Indian Literature and Film
Presenter: Indu Chugani
In this workshop, participants will explore caste in India during the 1930’s. We will look at the challenges of teaching about two groups of marginalized Indians, widows and untouchables, as each group began to gain legal support and social standing during this period of radical change in Indian history. By looking at excerpts from Raj Mulk Anand’s short novella Untouchable and Deepa Mehta’s film Water, participants will explore what gets illuminated by pairing the two groups of outcastes. Participants will also explore how the time periods from which each text emerged reflects the extent to which each artist can imagine social mobility in Indian society. Participants are encouraged, but not required, to read Anand’s novella prior to the conference. Copies of relevant passages will be distributed during the workshop.
CASTE IN LITERATURE : The Love Laws: Teaching caste in The God of Small Things and The Space Between Us to high school students
Presenters: Lisa Levi, Gwen Duralek
In this workshop, teachers will consider the implications of caste for teenagers in India now and identify/discuss key similarities and differences between caste and social class in India. The workshop is framed around how caste functions in two key texts, Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things and Thriti Umrigar’s The Space Between Us.
Presenter Bios:
Lisa Levi teaches English to seniors at Franklin High School in Somerset, NJ and spent five weeks in India last summer on an American Councils/Fulbright Summer Seminar, teaching English at a KV/Government School in New Delhi. As a seminar participant, she visited different kinds of schools and organized professional development activities with her Indian counterparts.
Gwen Duralek teaches world history to juniors and philosophy to sophomores-seniors seniors at Franklin High School in Somerset, NJ. She routinely develops pedagogical and content-rich professional development sessions for the Franklin HS community.
Indu Chugani teaches middle and high school English at the Winsor School in Boston. Her academic interests include Indian and immigrant literature, both for children and adults. Through the span of her career, Indu has taught at both public and private schools in Atlanta, GA and in New England. Indu is a founding member of Educators for Teaching India and is an Associate at the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College, where she teaches workshops for teachers on the Ramayana and on the multiple uses for writing in the classroom. Indu earned her M.A. from the Bread Loaf School of English and her B.S.Ed. from the University of Georgia.