Prof. Kavita Daiya

Areas of Expertise

Postcolonial and Asian American Studies

Global Feminisms

Race and Sexuality Studies

Film and Visual Culture

Migration and Conflict Studies

Dr. Daiya is Director of WGSS and Associate Professor of English; she is also Affiliated Faculty in the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the Sustainability Program, and the Global Women’s Institute. A cultural critic, she is interested in how gender and sexuality have historically shaped the cultural imagination of nationalism, and of modern world migrations generated by geopolitical conflict, in South Asia and Asian America. Her feminist analysis of how literature and visual culture aesthetically present conflict, citizenship, and statelessness attends to how race, religion, and class intersect with gender and sexuality. Professor Daiya’s research has been generously supported by the NEH, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and the George Washington University’s Sigur Center for Asian Studies and Global Women’s Institute. She is committed to creating, and promoting conversations across the Humanities and Social Sciences in inclusive, innovative, and collaborative ways that build on existing strengths and create relationships across departments and programs. Dr. Daiya’s articles and reviews have appeared in edited volumes as well as journals like the PMLA, Genders, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, American Book Review, Journal of Asian Studies, among others. Previously, she served as the Director of the M.A. Program in English (2010-2014).

Education

Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Chicago.                                

M.A., English Language and Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

B.A., English Language and Literature, Magna cum laude, University of Rochester.

Visiting Scholar, Worcester College, Oxford University.

Publications

Books

Violent Belongings: Partition, Gender and National Culture in Postcolonial India. Temple University Press, 2008, 2011. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2013.

Graphic Migrations: Precarity and Gender in India and the Diaspora. Temple University Press (forthcoming 2020).

Gender, Media Cultures, and Activism in Asia and Asian America. Book manuscript in progress.

Editing:

Editor, Graphic Narratives from South Asia and South Asian America: Aesthetics and Politics. Routledge, 2019.

Refereed articles (published and forthcoming):

“Reframing Partition: Gender, Migration, and Storytelling in Conflict Zones,” MLA Guide to Teaching South Asian Women's Writing, eds. Deepika Bahri and Filippo Menozzi, MLA (forthcoming 2021).

“Intimacy, Imperialism, and America: Revisiting Post-47 Postcolonial and Asian American Writing,” Asian American Literature in Transition: 1956-1996, eds. Asha Nadkarni and Cathy Schlund-Vials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2020).

“The 1947 Partition, War, and Internment: Hidden Histories of Migration and Displacement in Transnational Asia” in Volume II: Asian American Literature in Transition (1930-1965) eds. Victor Bascara and Josephine Park. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming, 2020).

“Gender, Sexuality and the Family in South-Asian Fiction” Oxford History of the Novel in English (Volume 10). The Novel in South and South-East Asia, ed. Alex Tickell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 44-57.

“The World After Empire, or Whither Postcoloniality?” PMLA, Volume 132, Number 1, January 2017, pp. 149–155 (7)

“Partition,” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, eds. Sangeeta Ray and Henry Schwarz. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. 1278-1286.

“Ecologies of Intimacy: Gender, Sexuality, and Environment in Indian Fiction” in The Cambridge History of the Indian Novel in English, ed. Ulka Anjaria. London, NY: Cambridge UP, 2015. 221-236.

“Refugees, Gender and Secularism in South Asian Literature and Cinema” in Representations of War, Migration and Refugeehood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Daniel Rellstab and Christiane Schlote. Routledge, 2014. 263-280.

“Visual Culture and Violence: Inventing Intimacy and Citizenship in Recent South Asian Cinema” in South Asian Transnationalisms: Cultural Exchange in the Twentieth Century (Routledge South Asian History and Culture Series). Ed. Babli Sinha. New Delhi and London: Routledge, 2012.

“Visual Culture and Violence: Inventing Intimacy and Citizenship in Recent South Asian Cinema,” South Asian History and Culture 2.4 (2011): 589-604.

Preferred Pronouns

She, Her, Hers

Distinctions

Dr. Daiya served as visiting NEH Chair in the Humanities at Albright College (2015-2016) and as Andrew W. Mellon Regional Faculty Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Humanities Forum (2014-2015, 2012-2013). She also served as Associate Editor for Book Reviews of the interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal South Asian Review (Taylor and Francis) from 2012-2018. She currently serves as an elected member of the Dean’s Council. She has been invited to contribute essays to edited volumes and encyclopedias like The Novel in South and South-East Asia, ed. Alex Tickell (Oxford UP); The Cambridge History of the Indian Novel in English, ed. Ulka Anjaria; Blackwell Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, eds. Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray; MLA Guide to Teaching South Asian Women's Writing, eds. Deepika Bahri and Filippo Menozzi; and Representations of War, Migration and Refugeehood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Daniel Rellstab and Christiane Schlote (Routledge).