Professor Durba Mitra will be promoted to the rank of Associate Professor starting July 1. Professor Mitra is the first tenure-track faculty member hired with an appointment fully in WGS, and, accordingly, this makes her the first person in the 386-year history of the university to hold the title of Associate Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

Mitra’s award-winning book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020), demonstrates how ideas of deviant female sexuality became foundational to modern social thought. Her current book project explores the history of Third World feminist theory and South-South solidarity movements.

In 2019 she received the Roslyn Abramson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Harvard, which recognizes teachers for “excellence and sensitivity in teaching undergraduates,” and in 2020 she won a Star Family Prize for Excellence in Faculty Advising.

Please join WGS in congratulating Professor Mitra on her promotion!