Talk:Durba Mitra

By Sachi Anjunkar

Durba Mitra is the Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, as of November 2022. According to her bio, her research interests include the intersection of feminist and queer studies.

In 2021, she endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications related to India

1. Mitra, Durba. Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. Princeton University Press, 2020.
2. Mitra, Durba. "Social Science as Fabulation," "Unbound Sexuality as Refusal," "Encounter as Wonderment," "Excess as Speculation." Syndicate Symposium on Indian Sex Life. Edited by Jennifer C. Nash, Princeton University Press, 2021, https://syndicate.network/symposia/literature/indian-sex-life/.
3. Rao, Anupama, et al. "Theory from the Global South." Borderlines, 2021.
4. Mitra, Durba. "‘Surplus Woman’: Female Sexuality and the Concept of Endogamy." Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 80, no. 1, Feb. 2021.
5. Mitra, Durba. "Sexuality and the History of Disciplinary Transgression." South Asia: Journals of South Asian Studies, vol. 43, no. 5, Dec. 2020.
6. Mitra, Durba. "Sociological Description and the Forensics of Sexuality." Locating the Medical in South Asia. Edited by Guy Attewell and Rohan Deb Roy, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 23-46.
7. MacKinnon, Catharine A., and Durba Mitra. "Ask a Feminist: Sexual Harassment in the Age of #MeToo." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 44, no. 4, Summer 2019, pp. 1027-1043, http://signsjournal.org/mackinnon-metoo/.
8. Mitra, Durba. "Translation as Techné: Female Sexuality and the Science of Social Progress in Colonial India." History and Technology, vol. 31, no. 4, 2016, pp. 350-375.
9. Mitra, Durba. "Akin to Sex." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 22, no. 4, Oct. 2016, pp. 642-645.
10. Mitra, Durba, and Mrinal Satish. "Testing Virginity, Evidencing Rape: Medical Jurisprudence and Rape Adjudication in Colonial and Postcolonial India." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 49, no. 41, 11 Oct. 2014, pp. 51-58.
11. Mitra, Durba. "Critical Perspectives on the SlutWalks in India." Feminist Studies, vol. 38, no. 1, Spring 2012, pp. 254-261.