Artwork supplied courtesy of Chitra Ganesh.
Thought-provoking commentary on the many intersections of gender and violence.
Current Projects
Radicalizing Her, Beacon Press (FOR SALE NOW)
An urgent corrective to the erasure of the female fighter from narratives on gender and power, demanding that we see all women as political actors.
De Armas Tomar: Por Que Las Mujeres Eligen La Violencia (Sexto Piso 2023)
Pamphlet Design by April Zhu
Recent Work
The Garret: A Pamphlet
Dismantling Narrative Dominance
Objects of Discipline: Finding the Fighter
Other Active Projects
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Housed at We Are Purposeful, the initiative draws on in-depth research on the intersections of gender and violence for marginalized women worldwide to inform activist organizing, policy debates, and art.
We know that gender determines vulnerability to violence.
We know that violence is a political act.
We seek to understand the political impact of this violence.
We are concerned with how the wound that forms around moment(s) of multiple forms of violence shapes political identities. We work to mobilize from this, deeper, place of power. One that is both intimate and universal. As we resist, we work to dismantle the dominant narratives violence breeds.
How do we move from disruption to transformation? As we reflect over five years, we trace our own evolving consciousness: perhaps to publish inside an industry is to de-politicize, to teach inside a classroom is too weighted by academic structures. We believe that the lasting impact of influencing happens offline and prevention must begin before social narratives set in.
As a collective, our work is to educate to liberate: to incite, mobilize, dismantle, and radically re-imagine in ways that honor legacies of struggle and build mass movements to resist violence.
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Senior Research Scholar, Legacies of Conflict in South Asia Archive Project: Political Conflict, Gender, and People’s Rights Project, University of California, Berkeley.
Visiting Professor: Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
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Through narrative journalism, commentary, and art, Adi celebrates voices often sidelined from mainstream western debates about foreign policy, creating a space for nuanced explorations of the world’s deepest challenges, insisting that political debates reflect lived experiences. Adi, meaning “to strike” in Tamil, has multiple connotations (a military intervention or attack, a form of protest, a euphemism used by women to describe rape). Learn More.
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Through Guernica Magazine, this series, developed and curated by Dr. Gowrinathan, pairs women novelists with female fighters in Colombia, Nepal, Nigeria, and the United States to explore the lived experiences of female militants and reveal distinctive political identities. (December 2016). This project is generously supported by Eve Ensler and VDay. Learn More.
