Prof. Kavita Daiya Profiled in Sigur Center Newsletter
Check out the profile of English Prof. Kavita Daiya in the fall 2010 issue of The Asian Connection, the newsletter of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, covering Spring and Summer 2010.
Prof. Daiya’s research investigates questions of violence, displacement, and ethnic nationalism in South Asia. Her book Violent Belongings: Partition, Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial India (Temple University Press, 2008) uses the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent as the focal point for an investigation of violence and culture in postcolonial Indian and South Asian literature and culture. (The website excerpts Chapter 1.)
Prof. Daiya’s current research, which has received Sigur Center support, investigates migration and displacement caused by the Partition, and includes a website that catalogs testimonies of that traumatic 1947 event. “As a South Asianist,” Prof. Daiya tells the Sigur Center, “for me the historical migration of South Asians both within and beyond the nation is profound, rich and important to scrutinize. It is bound up with the creative reinvention of memory and identity.”
In the English department, Prof. Daiya teaches a variety of courses (introductory, advanced undergraduate, and graduate) on postcolonial literature and theory, South Asian literature, and postcolonial theory and film.
