Brown Bag gives students the opportunity to hear what it’s like to learn about religion, gender development and rural tradition abroad.
The Brown Bag event hosted by the Women’s Center will inform participants about an opportunity to learn about religion and gender development abroad.
The discussion, titled “India: Gender, Culture and Development,” will focus sn a new study abroad trip to India available to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies along with classics and world religions students.
Sarah Jenkins, program coordinator for the Women’s Center, said she predicts that the event will have an engaging conversation.
“I think it should be a really interesting discussion just thinking about the gender roles that are in India and the different cultural practices that we don’t really consider a lot,” Jenkins said.
The event will be facilitated by Julie White and Brian Collins who both took part in the trip last year. The program started last summer when seven Ohio University students traveled to a rural part of central India to study at the Gopikabai Sitaram Gawande College.
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At the talk, Collins and White will discuss the coursework the students took, along with other elements of the trip such as field trips to villages and religious sites, and relationships with Indian students at Gopikabai Sitaram Gawande College.
“This is one of our new programs,” Collins, classics and world religions professor, said. “It’s something we worked really hard to get off the ground, and it’s probably the most significant, active part of our ongoing partnership with GSG College.”
During the trip this summer, Collins will be teaching courses covering four major religious traditions in central India.
White said while this event is to promote this new excursion, it is not exclusive for those thinking of going to India specifically. The event can be informative for anyone thinking about studying “gender in cross-cultural perspective.”
“The hope is to give students who might be interested in going to India a better sense of what it’s like, but also just to speak to people who are just generally having an interest in gender development,” White said.
White acknowledged the academic value of going to a place like India, particularly for WGSS students and those interested in studying “gender in cross-cultural perspective.”
“(India) produces some of the most illuminating scholarship on women and development,” she said. “There are lots of reasons to be interested...in India as a place that is with its own sort of indigenous, feminist intellectuals.”
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