Date: 14th June 2017 Time: 6:15pm – 7:30pm Venue: G3, SOAS
Sexuality in India offers an expression of nationalist anxieties and is a significant marker of modernity through which subjectivities are formed among the middle class. This book investigates the everyday experience of queer Indian men on digital spaces. It explores how queer identities are formed in virtual spaces and how the existence of such spaces challenge and critique ‘Indian’-ness. It also looks at the role of class and intimacy within the discourse. This work argues that new media, social networking sites (SNSs), both web and mobile, and related technologies do not exist in isolation; rather they are critically embedded within other social spaces. Similarly, online queer spaces exist parallel to and in conjunction with the larger queer movement in the country.
Rohit K Dasgupta is lecturer in the Institute of Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University. Prior to this he lectured at University of Southampton. He is the author of Digital Queer Cultures in India (Routledge, 2017), coauthor of Social Media, Sexuality and Sexual Health (Bloomsbury, 2017) and coedited the volumes- Rituparno Ghosh: Cinema, Gender and Art (Routledge, 2016) and the forthcoming Friendship as Social Justice Activism (Chicago, 2017). His teaching and research interests are ethnography, film and media, queer studies, protest and activism, and cultural politics. He also ran for Parliament as a Labour Party Candidate in 2017.