Colonial History

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's 1924 Bengali novella centers a women-run school and welfare institution, asking how education, work, and mutual aid can build public life without pretending that reform is a frictionless utopia.

Leila Ahmed traces how gender, law, and religious authority changed across Islamic history, then shows how colonial rule turned the veil and the ‘woman question’ into political symbols.

Mary Prince’s 1831 narrative links enslavement to bodily labor, family separation, marriage, and constrained freedom, while its editorial framing raises questions about testimony and authority.

In this 1882 Marathi polemic, Tarabai Shinde turns public blame over widowhood into a challenge to men's unequal claims to moral authority and freedom.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's 1905 feminist science-fiction story turns gendered access to education, public space, and science into a speculative experiment - and asks whether knowledge will serve everyday life or militarized power.

French Indochina, 1929. A 15-year-old white French girl meets a wealthy 32-year-old Chinese man on a ferry across the Mekong River. This is not just a forbidden romance crossing race and class lines, but a profound gaze into desire, poverty, family trauma, and colonial power. In this autobiographical novel, Duras reconstructs this memory of precocious eros with fragmented and mesmerizing prose.

Mati Diop follows 26 looted treasures returning to Benin, joining a constructed ancestral voice to young people's debate over restitution and cultural authority.

Atiq Rahimi adapts Mukasonga’s novel about a Rwandan girls’ school, asking how education, racial myths and belonging can become instruments of exclusion.

Sarah Maldoror follows Maria’s search for her husband in colonial Angola, revealing care and communication as infrastructure for anticolonial resistance.

Christienna Fryar’s Oxford lecture compares Ann Pratt and Mary Seacole, returning to Mary Prince and historians’ archival responsibilities.

An IIS-UNAM gathering brings Indigenous and Afro-Mexican voices into conversation about movements, colonial memory and women’s political participation in contemporary Mexico.