Creeping Conservatism: Neo-liberalism at Home, Militarism Abroad

With the 2016 Election Cycle in full swing, it has become apparent that the country has moved away from establishment politics towards the fringes of both parties; the phenomenon has caught most by surpise, and has caused many to question the process and possible results of this poltical polarization.

To better understand the current poltical climate, RISE has collaborrated with the Ahlul Bayt Student Organization at the University of Houston to host Professor Snehal SInghavi at the Univeristy of Houston to present his analysis on the subject.

Snehal Shingavi is associate professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin, where he teaches South Asian literatures in English, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of the South Asian diaspora. He received his PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley and has taught previously at Notre Dame de Namur University and the University of Mary Washington. He is a long time social justice activist, having participated in a number of movements including the United Students Against Sweatshops, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Association of Graduate Student Employees/UAW local 2865, the Campus Antiwar Network, the Texas State Employees Union, the People’s Task Force, and Occupy Austin.

He is the author of The Mahatma Misunderstood: the politics and forms of literary nationalism in India (Anthem Books, 2013). He has also translated Munshi Premchand’s Sevasadan (Oxford, 2005) and the Urdu short-story collection, Angaaray (Penguin, 2014) and of Bhisham Sahni’s autobiography, Today’s Pasts (Penguin, 2015). He has a forthcoming translation of Agyeya’s Shekhar: A Life (Oxford, 2015). He is currently working on a book-length manuscript titled, “The Country and the City, the Jungle and the Slum: the neoliberal landscapes of South Asian literature.”

We wil meeting in the Senate Chamber room in the UC North, there will be a Q&A following the main presentation.