Faculty Name: Dr. Shuhita Bhattacharjee, Dr. Anandita Pan, Dr. Gaurav Dhamija
Course Name: Gender in Theory and Practice: A Public Humanities Approach (LA6863)
Course Period:
01 st Aug to 18 th Oct 2025 (Tuesday 09:00 AM to 10:30 AM; Wednesday 09:00 AM to 10:30 AM)
21 st Oct to 30 th Nov 2025 (Tuesday 05:30 PM to 06:55 PM; Friday 05:30 PM to 06:55 PM)
Number of Credits: 3 credits
Course Contents:
This elective course takes a socio-culturally informed view of the idea of development in relation to gender. It challenges the mainstreamed economic and political narratives and discusses the need to include the gender and sexual ‘other’ within the discourse of national/global development. With this aim in mind, the readings draw on critical gender/sexuality theories, transnational feminist theories, queer theory, and postsecular gender theories. The course encourages students to connect these writings with paradigms of activism that measure a community’s ‘development’ by its intention and capacity to include the marginalized. The course also teaches the student to engage with the representations of gender/sexuality in contemporary popular culture and the long history of gender/sexuality-based protest art. It also encourages students to revisit the fundamental question at the heart of the course-- ‘What is development and whose development are we really talking about when we discuss national goals and images?’
The course aims to explore the evolution of feminist thought and theory in the Indian context. The areas that this course explores are broadly, construction of the Indian womanhood; female creativity as instrumental to identity; body politics; evolution of ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ through history; contemporary ruminations. In the process, this course will analyse how the notions of patriarchy as constituted of gender binarism, has come to be challenged through the intersectional lenses of class, religion, sexuality and so on. The core focus of this course will be on theorization, with creative texts (written and visual) functioning as supporting evidences.
This course also delves into the evolution and multiple dimensions of feminisms in India. It critically examines the intersectionality of gender, caste, class, religion, and region within feminist movements and thought. By engaging with theoretical frameworks, historical movements, literary contributions, and contemporary challenges, the course offers a comprehensive understanding of Indian feminisms in both local and global contexts.
This course examines key gender-related issues in economics, with a focus on female labor force participation, gender gap across various domains, and violence against women. It provides an overview of recent economic literature that documents gender gaps, explores the factors driving them, and evaluates policies aimed at reducing these inequalities. By analyzing policy interventions, the course equips students with tools to critically assess the role of gender in shaping labor markets, household dynamics, and broader economic development. A key component will also cover readings on violence against women, examining its determinants and consequences. Participants will engage with both theoretical and empirical perspectives to understand how gender influences economic outcomes.
Important Information:
The course combines three successfully taught and very popular courses by three faculty members in Liberal Arts, IITH. The course is entirely a combination of three well-taught courses at IITH. The courses on which this course is based are the following: LA5080 (Spring 2021, Fall 2022); LA6770 and LA6810 (Fall 2024 and Spring 2025), LA5190 (Fall 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
What you'll learn:
The course will impart a rigorous training and critical understanding in the following areas:
- Reading of critical and popular texts from an intersectional lenses of class, caste, religion, sexuality
- The representations of gender/sexuality in contemporary popular culture, including body politics, sexual violence, and political strategy
- The long history of gender/sexuality-based protest art.
- The evolution of feminist thought and theory in the Indian context; historical and theoretical overview of feminist movements in India
- Critical gender/sexuality theories, transnational feminist theories, queer theory, and postsecular gender theories
- Contemporary feminist issues and possibilities
- Feminism and media
- Future of feminism
- Female labor force participation, gender gap across various domains, and violence against women.
- The relation of gender with the labor markets and broader economic developments
About the Instructor:
Dr. Shuhita Bhattacharjee: Dr. Shuhita Bhattacharjee is a faculty of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Liberal Arts, and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Design, at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Her research on gender and sexuality studies, South Asian literature and culture, nineteenth-century literature, graphic novels, postcolonial studies, and the diaspora has appeared in South Asian Studies, South Asian Review, English Literature in Transition, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, and Studies in American Humor, as well as in Cambridge, Palgrave, and Routledge essay collections. Her first monograph is on postsecular theory (PostsecularTheory: Texts and Contexts , Orient Blackswan, 2023) and she is in the final stages of publishing her second monograph (Routledge) that examines the fin-de-siècle representation of colonial (Indian) idols in British and Anglo-Indian fiction. In the social sector, she has worked and continues to work both nationally and internationally on sex education, the prevention of gendered HIV-related violence, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment. With support from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and a UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Grant, she has establishment of the Public Humanities Initiative (PHI) at IIT Hyderabad and the formation of the Nineteenth-Century Diversities Research Network (NCDRN), South Asia chapter.
Instructor Profile
Dr. Anandita Pan: I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad.I obtained my Ph.D. from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kanpur, and M.A. from the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IISER Bhopal. My book, Mapping Dalit Feminism: Towards an Intersectional Standpoint was published by Sage-Stree (2020). Aesthetics in India: Transitions and Transformations was published by Orient Blackswan (2023).
I research and teach in the interdisciplinary areas of Humanities and Social Sciences with a specific focus on gender, caste, governance, and citizenship. My areas of research broadly include Gender studies, Dalit feminism, Intersectionality, and Feminist Standpoint Theory. I am specifically interested in exploring the myriad ways in which gender interacts and intersects with different structures that impacts different groups of women differently. Currently I am working on caste, gender and the Partition of Bengal, and feminisms in the era of social media. In the coming years I also intend to broaden my research in the area of gender and cultural studies with special emphasis on sexuality and representation in literature and popular media. I am interested to understand how gender can be used as a praxis vis-à-vis other emancipatory epistemologies to provide a more holistic solution to the ongoing problematics of equality and discrimination.
Instructor Profile
Dr. Gaurav Dhamija: I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Telangana, India. My primary research interests include applied microeconometrics in the field of health, education, gender, and labor market outcomes. Currently, I am working on the issues on malnutrition, violence against women and climate shocks. Noteworthy contributions include studies on Integrated Child Development Services and health outcomes, educational hypogamy and female employment, violation of hypergamy and intimate partner violence, women's age at marriage and domestic violence, the impact of early-life shocks on educational pursuits, and dynamics of achievement gaps between public and private school students.
In addition to research, I have taught postgraduate courses such as Health Economics and Policy, Development Economics, and Impact Evaluation. At the undergraduate level, I have offered courses like Economics of Markets in Agriculture. My teaching portfolio also includes previous appointments at Christ University, Indian Statistical Institute Delhi, and the Indian School of Business and Finance, covering subjects such as Business Economics, Economic Development, and Econometrics.
