Sumeet Patwardhan of Macalester College to Deliver Lecture on Feminist Activist Tarabai Shinde Patwardhan’s talk “What I See with My Eyes: Tarabai Shinde on Men’s Blame of Women” will be held Oct. 17 at 5 p.m.

By Emily Innes
October 4, 2023

Sumeet Patwardhan, assistant professor of philosophy at Macalester College, will deliver a lecture titled “What I See with My Eyes: Tarabai Shinde on Men’s Blame of Women” at Washington and Lee University on Tuesday, Oct. 17 at 5 p.m. in Leyburn Library’s Northen Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, W&L’s chapter of Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) and the Office of the Provost.

Patwardhan’s research interests include ethics, moral psychology, feminist philosophy and social philosophy, with additional concentrations in Indian moral and political philosophy. In his talk, he will focus on the work of Tarabai Shinde, specifically her 1882 text “Stri Purush Tulana” (“A Comparison Between Women and Men”) and her condemnation of women-blaming. Shinde was a feminist activist who protested patriarchy and caste in 19th-century India, and “Stri Purush Tulana” is often considered the first modern Indian feminist text.

Shinde saw women being pervasively and undeservedly blamed by men for failing to meet stridharma (ideals of womanhood) and sought to end it, stating in “Stri Purush Tulana” her hope that men “might stop treating all women as though they had committed a crime.” Patwardhan’s talk will interpret Shinde’s condemnation of women-blaming and her strategies to combat it, arguing that her work offers a useful corrective to the contemporary philosophical literature on blame. By exploring Shinde’s goal to simultaneously end women-blaming and encourage women’s self-respect, Patwardhan will discuss the importance of her work to the current political struggles against gendered standards of blame.

Patwardhan received his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Michigan, where he wrote his dissertation, “Consent, Blame, and Sex.” He is also the author of the poetry collection, “Sonder.”