Richa Nagar's Muddying Waters-- Hashim Ali

Selected readings of Richa Nagar’s monograph entitled “Muddying Waters” makes a case for transnational feminism and its implications. Nagar grapples with a quintessential question: “how can feminists use fieldwork to produce knowledges across multiple divides of power, locations, and axes of difference in ways that do not reflect or reinforce the interests, agendas, and priorities of the more privileged groups and places?

I was particularly fascinated by her discussion of “high theory” in academia versus politically relevant research in the particular communities. Nagar insists on adopting a more accessible approach to producing knowledge that can be transmitted in multiple communities. As a post-colonial scholar in training, this is one of the dilemmas I contended when I started my research. Initially, I researched about the Pakistani national monuments and social movements. As part of my dissertation project, I came up with a plan to conduct workshops in Pakistani museums and hold an exhibition at UIC. As Nagar points out, activism and public history project in my case should not just be considered as some “extracurricular” project; the academic world should consider it as serious work.

In the history discipline:

1. How do public history projects matter in the tenure-track process? What tactics should be utilized by public historians to make their work more acceptable in academia?