Coverage Opportunity

What:		Vijay Prashad, the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, will discuss the notion of “Black Gandhi” in an inaugural lecture for his endowed chair. Prashad’s talk purports that from the late 1920s onward, oppressed people in Africa and African America asked, “Where is our Black Gandhi?” Debates broke out on this question. But, Prashad suggests, Gandhi is not what he seems. He is not simply a saint, a Mahatma. Gandhi went to South Africa as a lawyer and returned to India as a radical political activist. What produced Gandhi? And, when Gandhi was translated into American, what was that process of political translation? That is the story of Black Gandhi.  In September 2006, Prashad was appointed the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History, an endowed chair established in 1995 with a gift from George and Martha Kellner. George Kellner ’64 is a trustee of the College and also served on the Board from 1992-2000.
When:		Thursday, February 1, 2007, at 4:30 p.m.
Where:		McCook Auditorium on the Trinity College campus
Background:		Vijay Prashad received his B.A. from Pomona College and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He began teaching at Trinity in 1996 and is the director of the International Studies Program. In 1999, Oxford University Press published a revised version of his dissertation, Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community. He subsequently published nine books, including two that were chosen by the Village Voice as the top 25 books of the year, Karma of Brown Folk (2000) and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (2001). In 2006, South End Press published his co-edited volume, Dispatches from Latin America: Experiments Against Neoliberalism, and in February 2007, the New Press released his most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. He is a columnist for India’s leading news magazine, Frontline, and he writes regularly for Z Magazine, ColorLines, The Indian American and Counterpunch. He is vice chair of the executive board of the Center for Third World Organizing (www.ctwo.org), on the board of the National Priorities Project, on the advisory board of the Connecticut Union Community Fund (AFL-CIO), on the board of United for a Fair Economy, an editor of Amerasia Journal and of The Subcontinental. In 2000, he received the award for distinguished teaching at Trinity.

For more information, call (860) 297-2471. This lecture is free and open to the public.

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