Atiya khan model

SAI Aman Fellow, 2014-2015

Atiya Khan is a historian of Modern South Asia. Her first project recovers the untold story of progressive politics in Pakistan from the consolidation of the efforts to carve a Muslim majority state out of British India in 1940 until the fracture of that state with the Bangladesh War in 1971. She argues that the vicissitudes of the socialist left, its defeats at key historical moments altered the vector and the conditions of possibility for democracy in Pakistan. She is also working on a monograph that focuses on the historiography of South Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include decolonization in South Asia, difficulties of democracy and development in postcolonial South Asia and the Muslim World, and history of the international New Left social movements.

Written by Amanda Sage on September 1, 2017

“I was determined to lift the silence surrounding domestic violence, so I made a goal to talk about it openly and often.”

When we experience violence—especially if it’s inflicted by someone we love or trust—it affects how we see ourselves and our world. It can extend to all aspects of our lives, discolouring what we think we deserve, how we treat others and how we let ourselves be treated.

That applies to survivors of violence. It also applies to those who perpetrate it.

Violence has a far-reaching, long-lasting impact for all who are touched by it. Yet we rarely talk about it.

In her remarkable documentary, A Better Man, Attiya Khan bravely breaks that silence. Her film explores the abusive two-year relationship she endured with a man named Steve more than 20 years ago, when they were both teenagers. But the doc’s most striking feature is that it doesn’t just give voice to the survivor; it provides a platform for her abuser, too.

A Better Man begins w

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