What does it mean to be queer in Southasia? After making historic legal gains, what does the LGBTIQ movement in Nepal look like two decades later? How has the Blue Diamond Society, the pioneering LGBTIQ organization, engaged with and accommodated a new generation of activists? The panelists will loiter around these themes and more. 

The event is co-hosted by SASNET and the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS), with its home at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Join us for a conversation between Niranjan Kunwar, author of Nepal’s first queer memoir, Between Queens and the Cities, and Dr. Debanuj Dasgupta, Assistant Professor, Feminist Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Niranjan Kunwar 

Niranjan Kunwar is a writer and an education consultant based in Kathmandu, Nepal. His first book, Between Queens and the Cities, was published by Fine Print Books in 2020. Niranjan received an M.S.Ed. from the City University of New York in 2008 and worked as a primary school teacher in New York City’s private and public schools before returning to his native Nepal. He writes about contemporary art, queer issues, and literature, and his work has been published in The Huffington Post, The Kathmandu Post, Himal Southasia, Record Nepal, among others. As an educator, he focuses on promoting critical thinking and building creative spaces in Nepal's education sector. Niranjan can be found on Twitter as @metronir.  

Debanuj Dasgupta 

Debanuj Dasgupta is Board Co-Chair of CLAGS and Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research and teaching focuses on racialized regulation of space, and the global governance of migration, sexuality, and HIV. Prior to his doctoral degree, Debanuj worked for over sixteen years within several international development agencies, HIV/AIDS, LGBT rights and immigrant rights organizations in India and the US. In 1994, Debanuj founded the first HIV prevention program for men who have sex with men and gay men in Kolkata, and since relocating to the United States has organized LGBT immigrants & asylum seekers in the New York tri state area. He has received several awards and is co-editor of Friendship as Social Justice Activism: Critical Solidarities in Global Perspective (Seagull Press/University of Chicago Press), and Queering Digital India: Activisms, Identities and Subjectivities (University of Edinburgh Press/Oxford University Press).

Please register here to join the event on Zoom (Webinar). The event will also be streamed live on SASNET's Facebook page.