Moira Fradinger is Associate Professor in the department of Comparative Literature at Yale University. She is the author of Antígonas: Writing From Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2023), the first book in the English language to approach classical reception through the study of one classical fragment as it circulates throughout Latin America. This interdisciplinary research engages comparative literature, Latin American studies, classical reception, history, feminist theory, political philosophy, and theatre history.

In Malayalam soft-porn cinema of the 1990s, female leads were cast as madakarani (sex-siren), a label that symbolized both their narrative role and professional distinction as second-tier contract laborers. In this talk, Dr. Darshana Sreedhar Mini explores soft-porn’s invocation of the figure of madakarani to chart out different spectatorial relations built through her presence as an embodiment of screen pleasures.

Featuring Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. Sadhwani specializes in Asian American and Latino voting behavior, elections, interest groups and representation. Her analysis of politics and elections has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, Politico, The Guardian, Vox, The Los Angeles Times, NBC News, The HuffPost and many more.