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Priya Jha Ph.D.

Professor
English

Education

  • Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Colorado Boulder
  • M.A., Comparative Literature, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

Professional Background

Professional Background

Priya Jha has published essays on representations of gender, sexualities and Indian nationalism in Hindi cinema. She was awarded a Senior Research Scholar Fulbright Award to work in film archives in India and has an essay, "Remembering Nargis, Retelling Mother India: Criticism, Melodrama and National Mythmaking" under consideration at "The Journal of South Asian Popular Culture." She is also working on an essay, "Who da man? Vivek Sharma's Bhoothnath and the geopolitics of Indian masculinities" and is co-editing with Amit S. Rai, a special issue of South Asian Popular Culture on Media and Non-linear History in South Asia, to be published in October 2011. Most recently, Dr. Jha was the recipient of a LENS grant for AY 2010-11, under the theme "Mapping People."

Professional Highlights

The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright-Hayes, Faculty Research Grant, University of Redlands and the Fulbright Senior Research Scholar program have supported her research. She received an Outstanding Teacher Award from the University of Redlands and a phenomenal woman award by the sorority WRW.

Experience

  • Assistant Professor, English, Murray State University, Murray, KY
  • Lecturer, Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
  • Lecturer, English, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ
  • Graduate Lecturer, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO

Affiliations

  • Modern Language Association

  • American Comparative Literature Association

  • Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies

  • European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies

  • Society for Cinema and Media Studies

Areas of Expertise

  • Anglophone/(Post-)colonial Literatures and World Literatures (18th Century – present)

  • Postcolonial Cultural Studies and Theories, in particular, Film

  • Gender, Sexuality and (Post) Colonial Modernity

  • Contemporary Critical Theory/Cultural Studies

  • Comparative Cultural/Ethnic Studies (South Asian/American, British multiculturalism)

  • Bollywood

Publications

Radio Interview. Book Review. Bhaskaran, Suparna. "Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects." Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal. 20.1 (2005).

 

"Lyrical Nationalism: Gender, Friendship, and Excess in 1970s Hindi Cinema," The Velvet Light Trap, no. 51 (Spring 2003).

 

Awards and service

  • Fulbright Senior Research Grant

  • Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Redlands

  • Phenomenal Womyn, WRW Sorority, University of Redlands

  • Fulbright-Hays

  • UR Faculty Research Grant

  • NEH Summer Seminar

  • National Training of Trainers (TOT) for Human Rights Education, University of Minnesota

  • School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University

  • Edwin R. Devaney Dissertation Fellowship, University of Colorado-Boulder

  • Fellow, Center for Humanities and the Arts, University of Colorado-Boulder

Presentations

  • "'Who da Man?' Vivek Sharma's 'Bhoothnath' and the Geopolitics of Indian Masculinities." South Asian Literary Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, December 2008.

  • "Translating the Global into the Local in W.E.B. DuBois' The Dark Princess: A Romance. American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Puebla, MX Spring 2007.

  • "The Bluest Indian: Race and the Ambivalence of Postcoloniality." USA Commonwealth Literature and Language Association Meeting, Santa Clara, October 2006.

  • Seminar Organizer, "Framing Transnationalism, (Re)Forming Feminisms in the Postcolonial Age." American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, College Park, PA, Spring 2005.

  • "Katherine Mayo, Mother India, and the Dilemma of Colonial Feminism." American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, College Park, PA Spring 2005.

  • "Birthing Colonial Modernity: Mother India's (Dis)eased Body and Corporeal Nationalism in Katherine Mayo's Mother India." 14th Annual British and Commonwealth Literature Conference, Savannah, GA, Winter 2005.

  • "Domestic Violence and the Recasting of 'Home' and Diaspora in Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding," 20th Annual South Asia Conference, University of California, Berkeley, February 2005.