Join the Departments of Women's and Gender Studies and Sociology on September 17, 2026 at 4pm in LSA Room 4154 for "Death's Intimacies: Water, Gender, and Alternative Belongings."

This presentation explores the gendered tending of the dead among South Asian Muslims and Sikhs in the North American diaspora. Focusing on sensory and affective practices of washing and preparing bodies, it reads water as a medium of transition and passage, inviting us to think beyond political borders toward alternative understandings of belonging.

Jyoti Puri is a feminist sociologist whose research and teaching primarily focuses on structural and institutional forms of regulation from the perspectives of marginalized subjects. Through her books and numerous essays, she explores how states and nations govern bodies, genders, sexualities, and death; examines the transnational aspects of governance shaped by colonial histories and postcolonial legacies; and strives to decenter Eurocentric theory and perspectives. She is the winner of Jessie Bernard Award (2021) from the American Sociological Association (ASA), as well as the Simon-Gagnon Lifetime Achievement Award (2023) from the ASA's Sexualities Section.