Course Offerings:

Gender, Caste, and Nation
Political Modernity (Themes in South Asian History)
Colonialism and Nationalism in South Asia
Modern South Asia
Capitalism, Colonialism, Culture
Gendered Controversies:  Women's Bodies and Global Contestations
Gender and Empire
Topics in South Asian History
Law and Society in South Asia
Caste, Power and Inequality
Decolonization: Studies in Political Thought and Political History

 

Professor Rao’s research and teaching interests are in the history of anticolonialism; gender and sexuality studies; caste and race; historical anthropology, human rights, and social theory.

She received her B. A. (Honors) from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. from the Interdepartmental Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan.

She currently serves as the President of the Society for the Advancement of the History of South Asia (SAHSA) of the American Historical Association; Director, project on "Liberalism and its Others" (Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference), Columbia University, and member of the South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (2010-2012).

 

Awards and Fellowships:

• American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Fellowship (funded by the NEH)

• Fellow in Residence, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle, North Carolina, 2008-2009

• Visiting Fellow, Center for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Summer 2009

• American Historical Association, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant for Research in European, African, or Asian History, Summer 2008

• National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend, June 1-July 31, 2008

• SIRT Mellon Fellowship for course development, for “The Problem of Freedom: Comparative Studies of Inequality and Its Aftermath,” on comparative civil rights in India, South Africa and the United States, academic year 2007-2008

• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, calendar year 2004

• Charter Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Oxford University (any 10-week term during 2004)

• Barnard College, Mellon Professional Development Award to run public seminars to complement course “History and Human Rights: Capitalism, Colonialism, and Culture,” Fall 2002.

• NEH Summer Stipend, June 1-July 31, 2001

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Sawyer Seminar “The Production of the Past: History in the Making,” Columbia University, September 1999-May 2000

• Fellow, International Institute, University of Michigan, Advanced Study Seminar on “Violence and Ethics,” convenors Slavoj Zizek and Renata Salecl, 1998

• Rackham Predoctoral Dissertation Grant, University of Michigan, 1997-1998

• Rackham Dissertation/Thesis Grant and Hewlett International Dissertation Grant, University of Michigan, 1996

• American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Research Fellowship, January 1996- December 1996

• Social Science Research Council/ACLS International Dissertation Award

• Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities (1992-1997)

Publications:

Books and Articles

• The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India
  (University of California Press, 2009).

• “The Gender of Caste and Sexual Economies of Violence,” Feminist Studies (under revision).

• “Political Modernity and the Caste Question: A Review Essay,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (under revision).

• “Death of a Kotwal: Injury and the Politics of Recognition,” Subaltern Studies XII, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005.

• “Problems of Violence, States of Terror: Torture in Colonial India,” special issue “Discipline and the Other Body,” Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2001: 186-205.
  [reprinted in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXVI, No. 43, October 27, 2001: 4125-   4133].
  [reprinted in Postcolonial Passages. ed. Saurabh Dube. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.]

• "Understanding Sirasgaon: Notes Towards Conceptualizing the Role of Law, Caste, and Gender in a Case of 'Atrocity' , " Thamyris, Amsterdam, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1997: 103-136.[guest edited by Prof. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan] reprinted in Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-Independence India. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998.
  January-March, 1995.

 Edited Volumes

• Discipline and the Other Body: Correction, Corporeality, Colonialism. (co-edited with Steven Pierce), Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, Spring 2006.
• Gender and Caste: Contemporary Issues in Indian Feminism, for a series on Indian feminism, guest editor Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2003 (hardback). Paperback published Spring 2005 in India; co-published internationally by Zed Books, Summer 2005. [The reader has sold over 2500 copies, and is in its third printing].
• Violence, Vulnerability, and Embodiment: A Gender and History Reader. London: Blackwells, Summer 2005.

Journal Special Issues

• Co-editor with Shani D’Cruze, “Violence, Vulnerability, and Embodiment,” a special issue of Gender and History, Volume 16, Number 3, November 2004.

• Co-editor with Steven Pierce, “Discipline and the Other Body,” Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2001.

 Essays in Edited Volumes and Special Issues

• “Who is the Dalit? The Emergence of a New Political Subject,” in Claiming Power from Below: Dalits and the Subaltern Question in South Asia (afestschrift in honor of Eleanor Zelliot). eds. Manu Bhagva and Anne Feldhaus. Delhi: Oxford University Press (forthcoming winter 2006).
• “Dalit Selfhood and Problem of Representation,” Seminar special issue on “Dalit Perspectives,” February 2006.
• “Ambedkar and the Politics of Minority: A Reading,” in From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition, eds. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rochona Mazumdar and Andrew Sartori, Oxford University Press (forthcoming winter 2006).
• “Sexuality, and the Family-Form,” in a symposium on Marriage, Sexuality, and Community, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XL, No. 8, February 19, 2005: 715-718.
• “Testifying to Violence: Gujarat as a State of Exception?” in Elizabeth Castelli and Janet Jakobsen eds. Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence. New York: Palgrave and MacMillan, 2004.

Reviews, Comments, Short Essays

• “Torture, the Public Secret,” Economic and Political Weekly, June 5, 2004.
• Review, Untouchable Pasts by Saurabh Dube. Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 2001, for Indian Economic and Social History Review, Volume 42, Number 1, 2004: 138-141
• Review, David Ludden, David, Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia, London: Anthem South Asian Studies , 2002, for H-Asia (posted by reviews editor Prof. Sumit Guha).
• Review, Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth Century India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, in Social History.
• Comment on feminist anthropology, Anthropology News, April 2002.
• Review, Satadru Sen, Disciplining Convicts, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 3.3, Winter 2002.
• Review of Human Rights Watch Report Broken People and Mendelsohn and Vicziany’s The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India,“ Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars July-September, Volume 32, Number 3, July-September 2000: 65-67.

 Journalistic Writing

• “Indian Feminism and the Patriarchy of Caste,” Himal, February 2003.