Ways to be Unfree: Transgender Poetics
From The Observatory
Date
October 3, 2025
Location
Aaron Burr Hall, Princeton University
Area
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Ways to be Unfree: Transgender Poetics of Identity and Divinity in Southern India
Aniruddhan Vasudevan is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the intersections of gender and sexuality, religion, and ethics of relationality and care. He completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation is an ethnographic study of religious and communal life among a group of thirunangai transgender women in Chennai, India, and it details the place that attachment to goddess Angalamman holds in shaping ethical life for these actors.Key Speaker: Aniruddhan Vasudevan
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Princeton University Department of Anthropology
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We take an interpretive approach to the study of culture - an approach that requires intensive ethnographic fieldwork, deep engagement with critical social theories, and historical analysis. In addition to teaching foundational texts, our department is interested in conceptual innovations in the use and organization of evidence and modes of ethical engagement. Our department specializes in Socio-Cultural Anthropology, but we also offer undergraduate courses in biological anthropology, including evolution, epigenetics, adaptation, race, forensics and death.
