March 8th: International Women's Day, featuring a lecture by Vandana Shiva

“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.”  - Vandana Shiva

To celebrate International Women's Day, CSW is hosting a lecture by Dr. Vandana Shiva, world-renowned philosopher, environmental activist, ecofeminist, and academic researcher on agricultural and women's empowerment issues.

Born in India in 1952, Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and theoretician. Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many books, including Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (South End Press, 2010) Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis (South End Press, 2008), Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (South End Press, 2005), Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997), Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), and The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992).

Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin. She addressed the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, 1999, as well as the recent World Economic Forum in Melbourne, 2000. In 1993, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award). In 2010, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her commitment to social justice. The founder of Navdanya ("nine seeds"), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds, she also set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India.

Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics.

Dr. Shiva's talk will also serve as keynote address for a conference titled "Global Ecologies: Nature/Narrative/Neoliberalism," organized by Elizabeth DeLoughrey, UCLA;  Jill Didur, Concordia University, Canada; and Anthony Carrigan, Keele University, UK, and will take place at UCLA on March 8 and 9, 2013.

Dr. Shiva's lecture will take place March 8, 2013, at 6 pm in Broad 2160 E. The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are required. They will be available starting on January 21, 2013. For more information, visit: http://www.csw.ucla.edu/events/vandana-shiva.