Dr. Ania Loomba is a Catherine Bryan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research involves subjects such as early modern literature, histories of race and colonialism, postcolonial studies, feminist theory, and contemporary Indian literature and culture. She has published multiple works, including Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies: Gender, Race and Sexuality, A Cultural History of Western Empires in the Renaissance, and her latest work, Revolutionary Desires: Women, Communism, and Feminism in India.
The lecture is based on her recent monograph Revolutionary Desires: Women, Communism, and Feminism in India which examines the lives and subjectivities of militant-nationalist and communist women in India, from the late 1920s, shortly after the communist movement took root, to the 1960s, when it fractured. It traces their personal and political experiences through a wide range of writings—memoirs, autobiographies, novels, Party documents, and interviews—to show how they questioned, and were constrained by, the gendered norms of Indian political culture.
In addition to the lecture, Dr. Loomba will also be leading a graduate workshop prior to the lecture, titled "The Possibilities of Comparative Critique: Reading Gender, Race and Caste," at 1:30pm in the Research Commons. Please RSVP for the workshop with the Department of English through Eventbrite.com.
This event is co-sponsored by The South Asia Graduate Studies Association, The Department of English, and the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.