CCYSC Awaaz – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode Dr. Soni, Gitam University, interacts with Dr. Catriona Ellis, Strathclyde University about her recent book, "Imagining Childhood, Improving Children: The Emergence of an ‘Avuncular' State in Late Colonial South India" published by Cambridge University Press, 2023. Her research explores how colonial authorities, through education policies, child welfare programs, and juvenile reform initiatives, sought to position themselves as "avuncular" figures—benevolent yet authoritative guardians of children’s well-being in colonial south India.

Simran Josan, our CCYSC intern, is in conversation with Sumit Parewa (Trustee, TCLP) and Nisha (Class IX student) regarding The Community Library Project, a public initiative to promote the right to read and organise free libraries for all in India and beyond.

Sumit and Nisha share their experiences of joining the TCLP as young members and helping to bring books to working-class children in several parts of Delhi.

* This conversation has been recorded in the Hindi language.

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Hedi Viterbo and Ekta Oza. They discuss Dr. Viterbo's new book, Problematizing Law, Rights, and Childhood in Israel/Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Bridging disciplinary divides, and drawing on hundreds of previously unexamined sources (many of which are not publicly available), this book radically challenges our picture of childhood, human rights, and law, both in and beyond the Israel/Palestine context. In the book, Dr. Viterbo reveals how Israel, rather than disregarding children's rights and international law, has used them to hone and legitimize its violence against Palestinians. Further, he exposes the human rights community's complicity in this situation, due to its problematic assumptions about childhood, its uncritical embrace of international law, and its recurring emulation of Israel's security discourse.

Hedi Viterbo is Senior Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of London. His research examines issues concerning childhood, state violence, and sexuality from an interdisciplinary and global perspective. He is the author of Problematizing Law, Rights, and Childhood in Israel/Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and co-author of The ABC of the OPT: A Legal Lexicon of the Israeli Control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Ekta Oza is a PhD Scholar at the School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London. Her PhD focuses on geographies of childhood and political agency in India-occupied-Kashmir. She is the lead researcher and author of the book, Restless in the City: Conversations with Young People in Resettlement Colonies (SAGE-Yoda Press, 2021).

Music: Little Idea by Scott Holmes (scottholmesmusic.com) / CC BY-NC

Girls’ voices are often neglected or disregarded, but a girl child’s voice needs to be heard too and we need to give an ear to the messages that her chattering sound waves produce. Today we will be listening to the suffering of a girl child as double marginalised being a disable as well through the perspective of Alice Walker’s idea of womanism.

A transcript of the episode in English is available here.

Supriya Ghosh is a scholar from Azim Premji University. She is currently a content development coordinator creator at Language and Learning Foundation Delhi. She has been serving in the field of education for last 7 years and more in institutions like, Delhi Public School, Patna (Takshila Educational Society, Akanksha foundation Mumbai, Azim Premji Foundation, Uttarkashi (Uttarakhand) etc. She has worked with children in different capabilities and has also engaged with different marginalised sections of our society during the last few years.

Deepty Victor is an alumni of B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. She is an educationist, researcher, author, illustrator, a storyteller, an ELTReP Awardee by British Council 2014 and founder of ‘Colourful Story Mind.’ She has two published books on Amazon Kindle. She currently freelanced with S.C.E.RT. Assam on a Value Education based project. Below are the links to her books and channels:

The Picture Book of Alphabets 

Enter the world of tales of magic and mystery 

“The impact of the Bihar Language Initiative for Secondary Schools (BLISS) project on Teacher Educators: a study in Bihar” (a research paper published by British Council)

Youtube Channel Colourful Story Mind by Deepty Victor

Colourful Story Mind | Facebook 

Edited by Yashita Jain

Music: Little Idea by Scott Holmes (scottholmesmusic.com) / CC BY-NC

!Trigger Warning! This episode contains mentions of child sexual abuse between 25:18-25:39.

This 25th episode of CCYSC Awaaz is a tribute to the fearless activism and extraordinary life of Kamla Bhasin, poet, story teller, feminist, activist, and a pioneer in many endeavours. The interview follows Simran, a student pursuing her masters degree in education at Ambedkar University Delhi, in conversation with Kamla Bhasin as they discuss her journey towards writing, her books, what goes into the process of writing them, their significance and the impact of patriarchy on young children. 

Kamla Bhasin was an eminent South-Asian feminist activist, poet and author. She was the founder and advisor to Sangat - A Feminist Network and she was also the South Asia coordinator of the One Billion Rising movement. She has authored multiple books including the popular children's book Satrangi Ladke aur Ladkiya, that celebrates the diversity and individuality of boys and girls, Laughing Matters, Feminism & Its Relevance in South Asia, Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition, Understanding Gender, What Is Patriarchy etc. Several books and booklets on understanding patriarchy and gender which she authored have been translated into nearly 30 languages and are read all across the world.

Simran Varma is a writer and editor, who specializes in the field of education and history. She recently finished editing her first book, Crowdfunding: The Story of People. Prior to this, she has worked as a Gandhi Fellow in Mumbai - providing support to municipal school stakeholders. In her free time, she writes about gender and politics.

Edited by Veda Gopala (student, School of Education Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi)

Music:  Little Idea by Scott Holmes (scottholmesmusic.com) / CC BY-NC

Photograph: Bhupendra Rana, Kamla Bhasin, 2020, colour photograph, for article by Mittra Prerna. (2020, 21st May). ‘No two boys or girls are alike’: Kamla Bhasin on her books Satrangi Ladke and Satrangi Ladkiyan. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/parenting/learning/gender-no-two-boys-girls-are-alike-author-kamla-bhasin-satrangi-ladke-and-satrangi-ladkiyan-6420312/ (accessed on 10/10/2021)

The central theme of this conversation is children and the climate crisis. In this Podcast episode, Dr Tanu Biswas and Jyotsna Singh explore how the climate crisis has evolved over the years. The conversation addresses various stakeholders engaged in the debate on the climate crisis. Dr Tanu Biswas explains her opinions and experiences related to the Fridays for Future movement and youth activism. During their conversation, Biswas and Singh also create linkages between childism and the climate crisis; they eventually investigate how climate activists have connected to extreme themes, such as anti-natalism.

Dr Tanu Biswas is an interdisciplinary philosopher of education with a specialisation in childism. She is an associate professor of pedagogy at the University of Stavanger, and co-speaker of the Gender, Queer, Intersectionality and Diversity Studies Network at the University of Bayreuth. Tanu is a polyglot, who grew up in Bombay in the 90s. She now divides her time between her homes in Germany and Norway.

Jyotsna Singh is currently pursuing her master's degree in Education with a specialisation in Early Childhood Education and care from Ambedkar University, NewDelhi. Jyotsna just finished her master's dissertation, she also loves to explore new cultures and read about different cultural rituals and practices.

This episode was edited by Riya Kwattra.

This episode features a conversation with Clara Han and Andrew Brandel. They discuss Dr Han's recent book, Seeing Like a Child: Inheriting the Korean War (Fordham University Press, 2020), which explores the violence of the Korean War through the perspective of a child. In this book, Clara Han writes from inside her childhood memories as the daughter of parents who were displaced by war, and simultaneously, as an anthropologist whose fieldwork has taken her to the devastated worlds of her parents— Korea and the Korean language. Seeing Like a Child sees the inheritance of familial memories of violence as embedded in how the child inhabits her everyday life and invites us to explore categories such as “catastrophe”, “war”, “violence”, and “kinship” in a brand-new light.

Clara Han is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Seeing Like a Child: Inheriting the Korean War (Fordham University Press, 2020), Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile (UC Press, 2012), and co-editor of Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium (UC Press, 2015).

Andrew Brandel is an anthropologist at Harvard University, where he is a faculty member of the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies. His forthcoming book, A World Of Ciphers: Literature and Migration in “Global” Berlin (under contract with University of Toronto Press) is an ethnographic study of the claims made on, in, and for literature as it carries people through Berlin on irregular and intersecting paths. He is the co-editor of Living with Concepts: Anthropology in the Grip of Reality (Fordham University Press, 2021)

This episode discusses the recently published book, Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents: Innovative Approaches to Research Across Space and Time, co-edited by Deborah Levison, Mary Jo Maynes, and Frances Vavrus. This volume features a wide range of essays that showcase a variety of approaches to the interdisciplinary field of childhood and youth studies, examining how young people in a range of contemporary and historical contexts around the globe live their young lives as subjects, objects, and agents.

In addition to describing the book, the episode also features discussions about the related research collaborative Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents, sponsored by the University of Minnesota Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, which brings together faculty and doctoral students to explore the lives of children and youth in the Global South. The episode features interviews and comments by several of the book’s contributors and members of the collaborative, including Dr. Elena Albarran, Dr. Karen Brown, Dr. Kelly Condit-Shrestha, Dr. Elizabeth Dillenburg, Dr. Lauren Heidbrink, Dr. Elisabeth Lefebvre, Judith Merinyo, Dr. Emily Markovich Morris, Dr. Michele Statz, Dr. Frances Vavrus, and Dr. Laura Wangsness Willemsen.

This episode was produced by Dr. Elisabeth Lefebvre and Dr. Emily Markovich Morris and edited by Rafael Flores. The music featured in the podcast was performed and produced by Dr. Emily Markovich Morris and Tabu Zawose.

In this episode Peter Wien hosts Dylan Baun for a discussion of 20th century youth politics in the Middle East based on Baun's recent book Winning Lebanon: Youth Politics, Populism, and the Production of Sectarian Violence, 1920-1958 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). The conversation covers Lebanese youth organizations from their inception in the period of French Mandate rule between the two World Wars to the first Lebanese civil war of 1958. Despite the similarities between the youth movements in terms of rituals, appearances, and comportment, they played an essential role in the drawing of sectarian boundaries foreshadowing decades of violent conflict.

Dylan Baun is an Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East and Islamic World History at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Dylan received his Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Arizona. His first book, published with Cambridge University Press in 2021, is titled Winning Lebanon: Youth Politics, Populism, and the Production of Sectarian Violence, 1920-1958.

Peter Wien is Professor for Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Maryland in College Park. His latest book is Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 2017). Wien serves as President of The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII).

Edited by: Sanjana Bajaj
Music: Little Idea by Scott Holmes (scottholmesmusic.com)/CC BY-NC

In the second episode of the series with Basia Vucic about education and childhood, Yamila Rodríguez and Seran Demiral revisit child-centered approaches within a critical perspective by pointing out Janusz Korczak's experience with Polish children in between two wars through an experiment of building a democratic community. Basia both reveals the differences underlying between Korczak pedagogy and social psychologists, like Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, and explained a unique concept Praeternatural Pedagogy to underline children being as little scientists, thinkers, and human subjects as well. 

Basia Vucic is an expert on the philosophy of education -and especially on JK educational philosophy- from UCL, London (UK). Invited as a 2019 visiting fellow to the UNESCO Janusz Korczak Chair at the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, the scope of her research at UCL includes the hidden history of the child rights movement, political theory, and democratic education

Yamila Rodríguez, Lawyer & Ph.D. Scholar, Department of Law, University of Buenos Aires, researches the extension of the international obligation of the state to ensure children's rights to participation and access to justice in the criminal justice system, focusing on children who are victims and witnesses of crimes with her academic training and career as a civil servant at a Criminal Court in Buenos Aires, where she worked for over ten years.

Seran Demiral, Ph.D. in Sociology at Mimar Sinan University, has studied the subjectivity of children through their interaction with digital technologies. She is interested in changing childhood experiences within online environments and teaches digital childhoods, children's literature, creative writing, and sociology at various universities as a part-time lecturer. 

Edited by Nipunika Sachdeva

Music:  Little Idea by Scott Holmes (scottholmesmusic.com) / CC BY-NC