Columbia University
Seminar on South Asia
"Writing Gender and Architecture:
Women at the shrine of Lal
Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan, Pakistan."
Professor Kishwar Rizvi, Department
of Art History, Barnard College
Monday, March 28, 2005
4:00 PM
Southern Asian Institute
1134 International Affairs Building
420 West 118 Street, New York City
ABSTRACT:
The rituals of inhabitation in contemporary Pakistan are layered
and multifaceted. In a society defined by Islamic political
and religious values, women as well as men, are required
to abide by certain social preconditions - imposed and imagined.
This paper locates the discussion of women's spatial
experiences in the context of the Sufi shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in
Sehwan, Sindh. In contrast to the harem which is ultimately connected to
the patriarch who owns it, the shrine is an institution in which women's
participation is allowed, indeed expected. This paper explores the multiple
ways in which female authority is manifested here: as an invisible presence
(woman as patron; as proxy for the expression of men's devotion)
and as a visible performer (woman as keeper of the shrine and its legend;
as the female voice appropriated by both men and women participants in
Sufi rituals).
Kishwar Rizvi teaches the history of Islamic art and architecture
at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her primary research
is on representations of religious and imperial authority in
sixteenth-century architecture in Safavid Iran. However, she
has written on issues of gender, nationalism and religious
identity in the contemporary art and architecture of Iran and
Pakistan.
The talk will be followed by dinner at Faculty House
(4th Floor)
