DR. PRIYA JHA
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, ENGLISH

ACADEMIC POSITIONS
2011 – present Associate Professor of English, University of Redlands; affiliated with Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies; Asian Studies; Visual & Media Studies; and Race & Ethnic Studies
2005 – 2011 Assistant Professor of English, University of Redlands
2002 – 2005 Assistant Professor of English, Murray State University
2001 – 2002 Instructor, Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University
1994 – 2001 Graduate Instructor of Humanities, Literature, Women’s Studies, and Writing, CU – Boulder

EDUCATION
Degrees
 2001 Ph.D., Comparative Literature, CU – Boulder
Dissertation Title: To Incarnate India: Gender, Sexuality, and the Making of National Culture
2001 Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies, CU – Boulder
1996 M.A., Comparative Literature, CU – Boulder
 1990 B.S., Humanities and Communications, World Cultures and Literatures, Drexel University
Professional Development
 LENS (Learning Spatially Program Fellow), funded by the WW Keck Foundation
2010 University of Redlands
 Mapping Partitions of Ireland, South Asia, and Israel/Palestine
 SENIOR RESEARCH FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR, INDIA
2009 Jawaharlal Nehru University, School of Arts’ and Aesthetics, New Delhi
 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES SUMMER INSTITUTE
2004 East-West Center and the University of Hawa’i, Manoa, Honolulu, HI
 Institute Title: “Religion and Politics in India: History, Culture, and the Contemporary Experience”
 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA HUMAN RIGHTS CENTER
 2002 National Training of Trainers for Human Rights Education
 SCHOOL OF CRITICISM AND THEORY, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, NY
1999 Seminar Title: “Late Nationalisms;” Seminar Director: Benedict Anderson

AWARDS AND HONORS
 2016 Finalist, Yale Whitney Center for the Humanities Mid-Career Fellowship
2012 Faculty Research Grant, University of Redlands
2009 Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Redlands
2009 Phenomenal Womyn Award, WRW (Service Sorority)
2007 Faculty Review Grant for Summer Research, University of Redlands
2006 Participant, NEH Seminar on Asian Theater, University of Redlands
2005 Fulbright-Hays Summer Institute grant (declined)

SCHOLARSHIP AND RESEARCH
Current Projects
Not That Kind of Indian: An American Fairy-Tale” Memoir.
Deliberate Designs: Affect and Aesthetics in Postcolonial Literature and Culture
Publications
Co-editor, with Rajinder Dudrah, Special Issue of South Asian Popular Culture, “Designing (Post)Colonial Knowledge: Imagining South Asia.” (upcoming)
“Birthday Wishes.” Asian American Literary Review, Testimonial Tapestry Project on Asian Americans and Mental Health. (upcoming)
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde (1982)” Women’s Rights: Reflections in Popular Culture. Ed. Ann Savage, ABC-CLIO, Greenwood Press, 2016 (upcoming)
“‘Making a Point by Choice’: Maternal Imperialism, Second Wave Feminism, and Transnational Epistemologies.” What is Feminism? Jennifer Nelson and Barbara Molony, Eds. Bloomsbury Press, 2016 (upcoming)
Book Review. Eaton, Natasha. Mimesis Across Empires: Artworks and Networks in India 1765-1860. Durham: Duke UP, 2013. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (2016, upcoming)
“Tina Fey.” The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World. Sage Publications, 2013.
Co-editor, with Amit S. Rai, Special Issue of South Asian Popular Culture, “Intensive Bollywood: Media and Nonlinear History in South Asia”, 10.3 (2011)
“Remembering Nargis, Retelling Mother India: Criticism, Melodrama, and National Mythmaking”, South Asian Popular Culture. 10.3 (2011)
Book Review. Bhaskaran, Suparna. Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects. Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal 31.2 (2005).
“Lyrical Nationalism: Gender, Friendship, and Excess in 1970s Hindi Cinema.” The Velvet Light Trap, 51 (Spring 2003).
“Finding Voice/Performing Cultural Identity.” Standards: An International Journal of Multicultural Studies 5.2 (1996)
Interviews
 WLUW, 88.7, Chicago Community Radio, Radiostan (May 8, 2009) http://www.radiostan.com/content/episode-3-brotherhood (on my work on brotherhood and male bonding in Hindi cinema)
KVCR, PBS Television, San Bernardino, CA (March 18, 2006). U.S. Media, Imperialism, and the Iraq War

RESEARCH / TEACHING AREAS

  • Global, Transnational, and Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies
  • Gender, Sexuality and (Post) Colonial Modernity, including Transnational/Postcolonial Feminisms
  • Cinema Studies (African, African-American, South Asian, in particular) /Film Theory

PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS
Invited Lectures (Selected)
“Philosophy of Diversity: Black Lives Matter” Murray State University, Murray, KY, August 2015.
“The Importance of Humanities in the 21st century.” Murray State University, Murray, KY, August 2015.
“Remembering Nargis, Retelling Mother India: Criticism, Melodrama, and National Mythmaking.” Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, March 2011.
“Remembering Nargis, Retelling Mother India: Criticism, Melodrama, and National Mythmaking.” Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, October 2009.
“Transnationalisms and Critiques,” Women and the Theater Annual Convention, New York, NY, July 2003.
“Race, Sexual Migrancy and National Belonging: The Films of Pratibha Parmar.” International Women’s Week, University of Colorado-Boulder, March 2001.
“Sexing Nationalism: Representations of Indian Womanhood in Hindi Popular Cinema.” Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, March 2000.
Conference Presentations(selected)
Co-organizer. Beyond the Postcolonial?: Meaning-Making and South Asian Studies in the 21st Century. 17th Annual South Asian Literary Association (SALA) Conference. Jan. 2-4, 2017 – Philadelphia, PA. (upcoming)
““’Girls Gone Wild’: Kamala and Amala’s Decolonial Storytelling in Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal: A Project for Future Children.” Ecocriticism and South Asia. Modern Language Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA Jan 2017. (upcoming)
“My Name is Khan and a Bollywoodization of Civil Rights Resistance through an Anthem of Unity” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, March 2016.
“Racial Trauma and Gendering Transnational Histories in Meena Alexander’s Manhattan Music." Rocky Mountain MLA Annual Meeting, Santa Fé, NM, October 2015.
““Their lives…they are a’changin’”: A chronotrope of mothers, daughters, and aunties in the time of immigration.” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 2014.
“In-betweeners: Memories of the 1.5 generation.” Autobiography. Söderton University, Stockholm Sweden, October 2014.
Panel Organizer, “Contesting Categories, Breaking Boundaries: Theaters of Resistance and Cultural Citizenship.” Paper Presentation, “Shadowdancing: Growing up Gen 1.5 during the 1970s.” South Asian Literary Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, 2012.
 “How Did We Get Here?: Google Earth and Charting the Roots/Routes of Partition in South Asian Literature and Film.” European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language. Istanbul, Turkey, 2011.
“Remembering Nargis, Retelling Mother India: Criticism, Melodrama, and National Mythmaking.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, 2011.
“The Bluest Indian: Race and the Ambivalence of Postcoloniality.” USA Commonwealth Literature and Language Association Meeting, Santa Clara, October 2006.
Seminar Organizer, Framing Transnationalism, (Re)Forming Feminisms in the Postcolonial Age. American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, College Park, PA, Spring 2005.
“Katherine Mayo, Mother India, and the Dilemma of Colonial Feminism.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, College Park, PA Spring 2005.
“Birthing Colonial Modernity: Mother India’s (Dis)eased Body and Corporeal Nationalism in Katherine Mayo’s Mother India.” 14th Annual British and Commonwealth Literature Conference, Savannah, GA, Winter 2005.
Seminar Organizer, (Not) All We Do is Talk, Talk: Communication, (Post)coloniality and Transnational Feminist Consciousness, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Ann Arbor, MI, Spring 2004.
“Combustible Histories: Blazing Feminine Subjectivities in a Transnational Framework,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Ann Arbor, MI, Spring 2004.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Courses Taught

  • Travel Course, India, “Gender and Development in South Asia”
  • Theories of Popular Culture
  • Gender and Nation
  • Images of Women
  • World Literature
  • Postcolonial, Global, and Transnational Literatures
  • Orientalisms
  • Disease, Hygiene and the Colonial Imaginary (co-taught with Biology Department faculty member)
  • Indian Cinemas and National Identity
  • Partition Literatures
  • Contemporary Literary Criticism & Theory
  • Gender and Development in India (travel course)

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Journal Reviewer
I currently review scholarly articles for the following journals: Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; New Review of Film and Television; South Asian Popular Culture; Journal of Advertising, Rocky Mountain Review, and, Postcolonial Text
Selection Committees
 2009 Fulbright Award Selection Committee, New Delhi, India
University of Redlands
2011-15 The Educational Assessment Committee
2012 Peer Institution Working Group
2012 Meaning of Degree Working Group
2012 – 14 Educational Assessment Committee
2010- Disabilities Working Group
2010 Marketing Task Force, University of Redlands
2009 – Web Coordinator, English Department, University of Redlands
2008 – 12 Dean’s Advisory Board
2008 – 16 Convener, Faculty of Color Caucus
2007 – Mentor, Bill Rocque, SOAN
2007 – Advisory Board, Women’s and Gender Studies
2009 – 15 Advisory Board, Art History and Visual Media Studies
2005 – 07 Advisory Board, Asian Studies
2005 – Advisory Board, Race and Ethnic Studies
2007 From Bollywood to Hollywood. Film Series co-curated with Leela MadhavaRau
2006 – 07 Committee, The Many Faces of Globalization.
Murray State University
2004 – Personnel Committee, Department of English and Philosophy
2004 – Member, Global Campus Committee, Institute for International Studies
2003 Academic Advisor, Multicultural, Class, and Gender Studies
2003 – Chair, Film Studies Minor Committee
2003 – Member, Minority Recruitment and Retention Committee
2002 – 04 Faculty Advisor, Students for Social Justice
CU- Boulder
1999 – 2001 Faculty Forum Participant, Global Feminism and the American Classroom
The aim of the forum is to discuss possible reasons for the lack of attention on our campus to the intersection of U.S. imperialism and globalization, to present various experiences of student and departmental responses to teachers, and to identify campus-wide strategies for dealing with the problems encountered in the classroom
1997 – 98 Member, GLBT Certificate Program
1995 – 99 Member, Diversity Committee, Comparative Literature and Humanities
1996 – 97 Faculty Advisor, Annual Undergraduate Diversity Conference
1996 – 97 Chair, Board for the Women’s Resource Center
LANGUAGES
Hindi (fluent)
Spanish (excellent)
French (moderate)
Portuguese (reading)

Download CV here