09-25 Sonia Amin Public Lecture

SONIA NISHAT AMIN: Revisiting the Trauma of 1971: Selina Parveen in the Killing Fields of Rayer Bazaar

UHM Women’s Studies Colloquium Series Fall 2009
A presentation and discussion by:
Professor Sonia Nishat Amin
Department of History at the University of Dhaka and the Arthur Lynn Andrews Chair at the UHM School of Pacific and Asian Studies

Friday, 9/25/09
12:30pm-2:00pm
Saunders 637

This paper attempts to reconstruct the struggle of poet, journalist, editor and Freedom Fighter, Selina Parveen leading up to her tragic death at the hands of the Pakistani army and their collaborators in Bangladesh's War of Liberation, 1971. Selina Parveen is one of the few women who have been honoured by the commemorative stamps issued by the state in remembrance of the 'Martyred Intellectuals'. Yet her life story is often obliterated by the amnesia of historians who tend to gloss over the role of women in history. In this paper I would like to briefly reconstruct the trajectory of Parveen's life and struggle as part of the Bengalee Resistance in 1971 - from the start of her career as an independent journalist to the last moments of her brutal death in the killing fields of Rayer Bazaar.