"Bangladesh, The Day After"
with
Samina Luthfa, Dhaka University
"Women of July Uprising in Bangladesh: Prospects and Challenges"
Naeem Mohaiemen, Columbia University
"A Thousand Subodhs: Unruly graffiti becomes sanctioned murals"
Co-sponsored by the Theatre Department, Barnard College, and supported by the Presidential Research Award, Barnard College
The two educators will talk about the aftermath of the 2024 Bangladesh student uprising that overthrew the government, and the power struggles and history wars that have sprung up in the aftermath.
Time: 6:00-7:30pm
Location: Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street between Broadway and Claremont
No registration required to enter Knox Hall (which is outside the perimeter of the the Morningside campus). Event is open to the public. Guard may ask non-Columbia and non- Barnard affiliates to sign in, and present a Photo ID.
Photo: "Tigresses On the Streets / We Will Battle Together," Shahbagh, Dhaka, July 9th, 2024. Photo Credit: Suman Kanti Paul/Drik
Naeem Mohaiemen combines films, photographs, and essays to research socialist utopias, malleable borders, and fragile families. He is the editor of System Error: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (Siena: Silvana, 2007) and Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh Nationalism (Dhaka: Drishtipat, 2010), co-editor with Eszter Szakacs of Solidarity Must Be Defended (Budapest: tranzit, 2023), and author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Switzerland: Kunsthalle Basel, 2014), Midnight’s Third Child (Dhaka: Nokta, 2023), and Banglar Alokchitrer Bastobota Obhijan / Bengal Photography's Reality Quest (Dhaka: Nokta, 2025). Naeem is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the School of Arts, Columbia University.
Samina Luthfa (DPhil Oxford), is Professor of Sociology at the University of Dhaka and an
activist, researcher and playwright-actor. She works on environmental justice movement, political
ecology, feminism and media. She wrote books, book chapters and articles on indigeneity, environmental justice movement, female apparel workers, theatre artists, Mandi peasants and so on. Shecoauthored a book Vulnerable Empowerment: Capabilities and Vulnerabilities of Female
Garment Workers of Bangladesh (2016) and co-edited The Bangladesh Environmental
Humanities Reader (2022).
She currently serves as a senior research fellow at the Center for Entrepreneurship
Development at BRAC University for a multi-country, multi-university research project on
climate change and apparel industry in Bangladesh and is currently working on slow fashion,
tiger widows and their climate change adaptations and fish production value chains, labour rights
in the apparel industry, and environmental and political protests in South Asia.
She worked as the gender advisor in a multidisciplinary research project on food safety
in fish and chicken value chains in Bangladesh (2021-2024) and as Athena Swan Gender
Researcher/ Consultant (2012-2013) at the University of Oxford and taught sociology at the
Bangladesh Agricultural University and Independent University, Bangladesh.
She is a theatre artist and playwright, and one of the founder members of a leading theatre
troupe of Dhaka – BotTala. As an activist, she works with labour rights organizations,
environmental justice organizations, women’s rights activists, theatre activists and university
teachers’ organization, the University Teachers’ Network.
