The Centre for Gender Studies (CGS) at SOAS University of London invites you to a talk & poetry reading by Dr Choman Hardi on Monday 20 July 2015, 6pm in room B102 (Brunei Gallery, SOAS).
The situation of genocide-surviving Women, from Anfal to ISIS,
Genocide is a violent process of destruction and rupture, which leads to the creation of a traumatised and isolated underclass. It enhances the social and political inequalities already inherent in society. Addressing the challenges faced by women survivors of genocide requires recognising the links between the social, psychological and the physical domains of life. It requires acknowledging a past full of injustice, violence, and loss as well as tackling the survivor’s existing low socio-economic status. This talk will compare the situation of Anfal and ISIS surviving women in Iraqi Kurdistan.
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Bio
Choman Hardi is a member of faculty at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS). She was educated in the universities of Oxford (BA, Philosophy and psychology), London (MA, Philosophy) and Kent (PhD, Mental health). She was awarded a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust to carry out her post-doctoral research about women survivors of genocide in Kurdistan- Iraq. The resulting book, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq (Ashgate, 2011), was chosen by the Yankee Book Peddler as a UK Core Title.
Hardi has published collections of poetry in Kurdish and English. Her first English collection, Life for Us, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2004. In 2007 one of her poems from this collection, ‘My children’, was featured on Poems on the Underground in London. In 2010 four poems from the same collection were included in the English GCSE curriculum (AQA and Edexel). In August 2014, another poem, ‘Summer Roof’, was chosen by London’s Southbank Center as one of the ‘50 greatest love poems of the past 50 years’. In November 2014 she was awarded The Woman’s Prize by Andesha Cultural Centre in Sulaimani for her academic and creative achievements. Her forthcoming collection, Considering the Women, will be published by Bloodax Books in 2015.
Kurdish Studies Network 