Durba Mitra

Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

On leave Fall 2023 and Spring 2024

Durba Mitra works at the intersection of feminist and queer studies. 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. It was recognized for scholarly achievement with the Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize from the Association of Asian Studies, an honorable mention for the Law and Society Association’s J. Willard Hurst Book Prize for the best work in socio-legal history, and an honorable mention for the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Book Award from the International Studies Association.

Mitra's current book, The Future That Was: Feminist Thought in the Decolonizing World, is under contract with Princeton University Press. The Future That Was analyzes the history of Third World feminist thought and South-South solidarity networks. As part of her research for The Future That Was, Mitra is the curator of a multimedia exhibit, Solidarity! Transnational Feminisms Then and Now, on view through the end of October 2023 at the Poorvu Gallery at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. She has several ongoing book projects, including a book on shelter and relief in Asian America, a book of essays on sexuality and social science, and a curation of interviews with global feminist thinkers.

Mitra’s work has been recognized with the 2021 Walter Channing Cabot Fellow Award for “distinguished accomplishments in the fields of literature, history, or art” from Harvard University. She is the 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 was named as a “Favorite Professor” for three years in a row by the Harvard College Classes of 2021, 2022 and 2023.

During the 2022-2023 academic year, Mitra was Acting Faculty Director of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Mitra is the editor of “Books in Brief” for GLQ: Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, a member of the editorial board of the journal Signs, a contributing editor for Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and a contributing editor for Journal of the History of Ideas. She is a faculty associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and is a member of the Asia Center Council and Steering Committee at the Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard.

Selected Awards and Fellowships

2023 Favorite Professor, Harvard College Class of 2023
2022 Favorite Professor, Harvard College Class of 2022
2022 Dean’s Competitive Fund Award for Promising Scholarship, Harvard University
2021 Walter Channing Cabot Fellow for “distinguished accomplishments in the fields of literature, history, or art,” Harvard University
2021 Favorite Professor, Harvard College Class of 2021
2021 Mellon Faculty of Color Working Group Symposium Fellowship
2020 Star Family Prize for Excellence in Faculty Advising, Harvard University
2020-2021 Shelby Cullom Davis Center Fellowship, Princeton University
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

Edited Special Issues

2021 Durba Mitra, Carla Kaplan, and Sarah Haley (eds), “Rage” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 46, no. 4 (Summer 2021)

Books

n.d. The Future That Was: Feminist Thought in the Decolonizing World (under contract with Princeton University Press)
2020 Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)

Selected Publications

2023 “The Report, or, Whatever Happened to Third World Feminist Theory? Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 48, 1 (Spring 2023): 557-584.
2021 Carla Kaplan, Sarah Haley, and Durba Mitra, “Outraged/Enraged: The Rage Special Issue” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 46, no. 4 (Summer 2021): 785-800.
2021 Sarah Deer, Jodi A. Byrd, Durba Mitra, and Sarah Haley, “Rage, Indigenous Feminisms, and the Politics of Survival” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 46, no. 4 (Summer 2021): 1058-1071.
2021 Patricia Williams, Carla Kaplan, and Durba Mitra, “Ask A Feminist: Patricia Williams discusses Rage and Humor as an Act of Disobedience with Carla Kaplan and Durba Mitra” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 46, no. 4 (Summer 2021): 1073-1088.
2021 Durba Mitra, “Social Science as Fabulation,” “Unbound Sexuality as Refusal,” “Encounter as Wonderment,” and “Excess as Speculation,” in Syndicate symposium on Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020) Syndicate, edited with an introduction by Jennifer C. Nash. https://syndicate.network/symposia/literature/indian-sex-life/
2021 Durba Mitra and Kelvin Ng, “Durba Mitra on the Sexuality of Endogamy,” #AsiaNow.
2021 Anupama Rao, Meghna Chaudhuri, Matthew Shutzer, Andrew Liu, and Durba Mitra, “Theory from the Global South,” Borderlines
2021 “A new vocabulary for social life” Ideas, Princeton University Press.
2021 “Surplus Woman’: Female Sexuality and the Concept of Endogamy” Journal of Asian Studies vol. 80, 1 (February 2021)
2021 “Sexuality” in Aren Aizura, Aimee Bahng, Karma Chavez, Mishuana Goeman, Shona N. Jackson, Amber Jamilla Musser, Kyla Wazana Tompkins (eds), Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies (New York: New York University Press, 2021)
2020 “Sexuality and the History of Disciplinary Transgression” South Asia: Journals of South Asian Studies, special issue on “Translating Sex: Locating Sexology in Indian History, 1880-1960” vol 43, 5 (December 2020)
2020 “Durba Mitra, “Durba Mitra, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (New Texts Out Now)” Jadaliyya November 2020 (New Texts Out Now)” Jadaliyya November 2020
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).