GENDER AND DIVERSITY: India, Canada and Beyond

It is not very often that a book tries to break disciplinary boundaries with courage and acumen. This book Gender and Diversity: India, Canada and Beyond, confronts conventions, challenges definitions, offers new vocabulary and questions comforting platitudes. Comparing India and Canada, theessays suggest new ways of thinking about the issue of Gender and Diversity in multiple contexts. India and Canada provide a range of comparative paradigms even when they are distinct in many of their organizational structures. The current anthology, gathering material from eminent writers in both the countries, and adopting the tools of interdisciplinary pedagogy, presents cutting edge scholarship in emerging areas. The four sections on ‘Cultural Pluralism’, ‘Gender Perspectives’, ‘Life-Story/Her Story’ and ‘Practical Applications’ neatly divide the primary concerns while admitting to creative overlaps. The discourse in several voices engages with history, rootedness, belonging, orality, identity formation, life writing, family reorientations, human rights, cross-cultural milieu, policy formation, memorializing, politics of the body, and nuances of power. The twenty articles contained in the book delve in experiential learning in rural areas, work places and school districts, as also with literary texts of a theoretical nature. In effect, the collection demonstrates that modern knowledge systems on gender are built upon contemporary understanding of the shifting parameters by which gender is defined. The book will be useful to scholars in Comparative Literature, English and World Literature, Women and Gender Studies, International Relations, Canadian Studies, Political Science, Sociology, Social Work, Education, and many others.