Durba Mitra

Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute
Assistant Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

Durba Mitra is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. Mitra works at the intersection of feminist and queer studies. Her research and teaching focus on the history of sexuality, the history of science and epistemology, and gender and feminist thought in South Asia and the colonial and postcolonial world. Mitra’s 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 research explores the history of Third World feminist theory and South-South solidarity movements. Mitra is a faculty associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and is on the Asia Center Council at Harvard. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Signs, incoming editor of “Books in Brief” for GLQ: Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, and a contributing editor for Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Mitra is a recipient of the 2019 Roslyn Abramson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Harvard, which recognizes teachers for “excellence and sensitivity in teaching undergraduates,” and the 2020 Star Family Prize for Excellence in Faculty Advising.

Mitra is a founding member of xpMethod: Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research, where she is the moderator for the GenderSex Collective. She co-organizes the "Architectures of Knowledge" workshops, which has led to collaborative research projects on digital archives in Mumbai, India and Lahore, Pakistan.

Selected Awards and Fellowships

2020 Star Family Prize for Excellence in Faculty Advising, Harvard University
2020-2021 Shelby Cullom Davis Center Fellowship, Princeton University
2020-2021 Newhouse Center for the Humanities Fellowship, Wellesley College (declined)
2019-2020 Asia Center Seminar Series Grant, Harvard University
2019 Roslyn Abramson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Harvard University
2019 Publication Grant, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
2019 FAS Publication Fund Grant, Harvard FAS Division of Social Science
2019 Mellon Foundation Schlesinger Library Long 19^th Amendment Award for the course “Solidarity” in Spring 2020, Harvard University
2018 Asia Center Faculty Research Grant, Harvard University
2018-2019 Fellow, Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University
2018 Course Innovation Fund Award for “Feminist and Queer Histories of Difference,” Harvard University Office of Undergraduate Education
2018 Tenure Track Manuscript Workshop Grant, Harvard FAS Division of Social Science
2015-2016 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania
2012-2013 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of History and Gender and Women’s Studies, Bowdoin College
2012-2013 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa (declined)
2009-2010 Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, India
2009-2010 American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellows (declined)

Book

2020 Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)

Selected Articles and Essays

2020 “A Response,” Roundtable on Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought, Chapati Mystery, May 5, 2020. https://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/Indian_Sex_Life.html
2020 “Author Interview: Durba Mitra, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought,” NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality, January 21, 2020. http://notchesblog.com/2020/01/21/indian-sex-life-sexuality-and-the-colonial-origins-of-social-thought/
2019 “Sexual Science as Global History” Gender & History, 31, No. 2 (July 2019): 500–510.
2019 Soraya Chemaly, Carla Kaplan, and Durba Mitra, “Ask a Feminist: Soraya Chemaly Discusses Feminist Rage with Carla Kaplan and Durba Mitra” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45, no. 3 (Spring 2020): 759-774. http://signsjournal.org/soraya-chemaly/
2018 “Sociological Description and the Forensics of Sexuality” in Guy Attewell and Rohan Deb Roy (eds), Locating the Medical in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018), 23-46.
2018 "History’s Apology: Sexuality and the 377 Supreme Court Decision in India" Epicenter, September 2018. https://epicenter.wcfia.harvard.edu/blog/history%E2%80%99s-apology-sexuality-and-377-supreme-court-decision-india
2018 Catharine A. MacKinnon and Durba Mitra, “Ask a Feminist: Sexual Harassment in the Age of #MeToo,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44, no. 4 (Summer 2019): 1027-1043. http://signsjournal.org/mackinnon-metoo/
2017 “Saba Mahmood’s Religious Difference in a Secular Age” Chapati Mystery September 6, 2017. https://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/cm_roundtable_ii_religious_difference_in_a_secular_age_-_mitra.html
2016 “Translation as Techné: Female Sexuality and the Science of Social Progress in Colonial India” History and Technology, 31, 4 (2016): 350-375.
2016 “Akin to Sex,” Review of Lucinda Ramberg, Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015) GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 22, no. 4 (October 2016): 642–645.
2015 Review of Pratiksha Baxi, Public Secrets of Law: Rape Trials in India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Law and Society Review, 49, 2 (2015): 535-537.
2015 Review of Sanjay Srivastava, ed. Sexuality Studies (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013) The Journal of Asian Studies, 74, 1 (February 2015): 235-236.
2014 Co-authored with Mrinal Satish, “Testing Virginity, Evidencing Rape: Medical Jurisprudence and Rape Adjudication in Colonial and Postcolonial India” Economic and Political Weekly 49, 41 (October 11, 2014): 51-58.
2012 “Critical Perspectives on the SlutWalks in India” Feminist Studies 38, 1 (Spring 2012): 254-261.
2008 “Famine: Overview” in Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
2008 “Epidemics” in Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).