Professional Summary
Email: Narayara@ucmail.uc.edu
I am a historian of early modern and modern South Asia with research interests in histories of women, gender, feminist movements and literature, family, state-formation, capital, political economy, colonialism and law. I also have training in Women and Gender, and Global and Comparative History.
Presently, I am finishing my book manuscript entitled, ‘When Widows Ruled: Capital, Community and State in Northern India, 1748-1835’. This project reconstructs a social history of capital which centers the pursuits of female political and commercial actors in the transition to colonial rule. Challenging colonial narratives which cast widows as fragile and marginal victims of culture, this project draws attention to elite and non-elite widows as agentive figures who strove to maintain a stake in an increasingly masculinized political economy under the East India Company.
I have presented my work at invited seminars and conferences including the American Historical Association, Annual South Asia Conference at Madison, Wisconsin and Association for Asian Studies.
I have offered courses on South Asia while maintaining a keen focus on gender. These include, ‘Gender, State and Household in Mughal India’, ‘Mughal India’, ‘Modern South Asia’, ‘Women and Gender in South Asia’, ‘Gandhi at Chauri Chaura’ and ‘Civilizations of South Asia'. My teaching has also included global and comparative courses. These include ‘Gender and Capital’, ‘Modern Social Thought’ and ‘History of the Modern World’. Other courses I have developed and hope to teach include, ‘Gender and History’, ‘Women and Islam’, ‘Colonialism, Law and Gender’, 'History of South Asia through Poetry and Performance’, ‘Islam in South Asia’, ‘Networks of Piety and Kinship in South Asia’, and ‘Histories of the Indian Ocean World’.
Peer-reviewed Publications
‘Widows, Family, Community and the Formation of Anglo-Hindu Law in Eighteenth-century India’ in Modern Asian Studies, Volume 50 (3), 2016.
Work in Progress
“A Mughal Matriarch and the Politics of Motherhood in Early Colonial India” (Revise and Resubmit Decision)
“Hapless Subjects or Expert Agents?: Landed and Mercantile Women under Company Rule in Eighteenth-Century North India” submitted in consideration for a special issue on Gender and Capital.
“Forging Mughal Modernity: Mothers, Family and State in Late Colonial India”.
Book Reviews
Review of Chandrima Chakraborty, Masculinity, asceticism, hinduism: past and present imaginings of India (Delhi, Permanent Black, 2011) in South Asian History and Culture, Vol 4(3), July 2013, pp. 428-431.
Encyclopedia Entries
“Indira Gandhi” in Bonnie Smith (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press), 2008, p. 345.
“Sucheta Kripalani” in Bonnie Smith (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 3 (New York: Oxford University Press), 2008, pp. 41-42.
Education
Ph.D. in History: Rutgers University- New Brunswick New Jersey, USA, 10-2011
Positions and Work Experience
2015 -2017 Visiting Assistant Professor, Division of Humanities, Yale-NUS College, Singapore
2012 -2015 Assistant Professor, Department of History, William Paterson University, New Jersey, USA
2011 -2012 Post-Doctoral Associate and Lecturer in the South Asian Studies Council, Yale University, New Haven, USA
Contact Information
Academic - Narayara@ucmail.uc.edu
Narayara@ucmail.uc.edu