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Personal Summary

Educated entirely in India, Prof Vanita lived and taught there for many years. She is married, with one son. Her first novel, Memory of Light, appeared in 2020 from Penguin. She divides her time between Missoula, ÁÔÆæÖØ¿Ú, and Gurgaon, India.

Education

Ph.D. Delhi University, India

Courses Taught

Spring 2022

Talking to God: the Bhagavad Gita

British 19th-Century Poetry: Wordsworth to Wilde

Fall 2021

Goddesses

Intro to Literature: Love and Death

Spring 2021

SSEA202X Introduction to India

LIT520 Oscar Wilde: Life and Work

Courses taught

LIT319E Talking to God: the Bhagavad Gita.   Fulfills the Gen Ed Ethics requirement

LIT326  Stories East and West   

SSEA202X  Introduction to India 

LIT 327L Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century English Fiction

LIT329 Fathers and Daughters in Western Literary Traditions  

WLC328L Gender and Sexuality in Indian Cinema

LIT246L . Intro to Literature 

LIT 327. Shakespeare

Teaching Experience

Visiting Professor, Center for Disciplinary Innovation & South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago

Associate Professor in English, Graduate School, Delhi University India

Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor, Miranda House College for Women, Delhi University

Field of Study

History of Ideas; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Hindi and Urdu literatures; Hindu philosophy; British literature (Shakespeare; the long nineteenth century)

Selected Publications

Non-Fiction

1. Translated and edited with an Introduction. On the Edge: 100 Years of Hindi Fiction on Same-Sex Desire (New Delhi: Penguin, 2023).
2. The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna and Species (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2022).
3. Translated with an Introduction. My Family by Mahadevi Varma (a Hindi woman poet's account of her companion animals)
4. Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (Bloomsbury, New York; Speaking Tiger, New Delhi, 2018)
5. Edited with an Introduction, India and the World: Postcolonialism, Translation and Indian Literature (New Delhi: Pencraft, 2014).
6. Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India, 1780-1870 (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan; New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2012).
7. Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005; New Delhi: Penguin India, 2005, reprinted 2008). 
8. Gandhi’s Tiger and Sita’s Smile: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Culture (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005, reissued as an e-book 2015).
9. With Saleem Kidwai, Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (New York: Palgrave-St Martin’s, 2000). British Edition, Macmillan, 2000. Indian Edition, Macmillan 2001.  Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Updated edition Penguin India, 2008.
10. Edited, Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society (New York: Routledge, 2002). Lambda Literary Award finalist.
11. Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).  Indian edition Pearson, New Delhi, 2007.
12. Co-edited with Madhu Kishwar, In Search of Answers: Indian Women’s Voices from Manushi (London: Zed Books, 1984, revised edition Horizon Books, Delhi, 1991).
13. A Play of Light: Selected Poems (New Delhi: Penguin India, Viking Books, 1994)
14. Translated and edited with an introduction, Alone Together: Selected Stories of Mannu Bhandari, Rajee Seth and Archana Varma (New Delhi: Women Unlimited Press, 2013).
15. Edited and translated with an introduction, The Co-Wife and Other Stories by Premchand (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008). Some stories from this book also appeared in a low-priced edition in the Penguin Evergreen Classics series, under the title The Shroud (2011).
16. Edited and translated with an introduction, Chocolate and other Writings on Male Homeroticism by Pandey Bechan Sharma Ugra (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2009; with a somewhat different title and introduction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006).
17. About Me (autobiography of Pandey Bechan Sharma Ugra), with an introduction (New Delhi: Penguin, 2007). 

Forthcoming

1. Shakespeare's Re-Visions of History: Violence, Social Collusion and Resistance in Nine Plays (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2025)

2. Portraits from Memory by Mahadevi Varma, translated from Hindi with an introduction (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2025).

Selected Articles in Journals;

1. “The More You Think of It, the Less the Difference”: Animals and Upanishadic Thought in Thoreau and Tagore,” in Sophia (7 June 2023).

2. “Self-Delighting Soul: A Reading of Yeats’s “Prayer for My Daughter” in the Light of Indian Philosophy,” Connotations, 24: 2 (2014/15): 239-57. http://www.connotations.uni-tuebingen.de/vanita0242.htm
3.  “Wilde’s Will: Shakespeare as Model in In Carcere et Vinculis” in The Wildean: A Journal of Oscar Wilde Studies, No. 47 (July 2015), 90-100.
4. “The Romance of Siblinghood in Bombay Cinema,” in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 36:1 (2013), 25-36.  Reprinted in Unfamiliar Ground: Security, Socialisation and Affect in Indian Families ed. Ira Raja (New York: Routledge, 2013).
5. “Plato, Wilde and Woolf: The Poetics of Homoerotic ‘Intercourse’ in A Room of One’s Own,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 14: 4 (2010), 415-31. 
6. “Full of God: Ashtavakra and Ideas of Justice in Hindu Texts,” Research on South Asia (Cambridge University) 3: 2 (2009), 167-81.
7. “ ‘Shakespeare’s Tragic Kates: Reframing the Taming in India,” Shakespeare Survey, No. 60 (September 2007), 84-101.
8. “Mariological Memory in The Winter’s Tale and Henry VIII,” in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 40: 2 (Spring 2000), 311-338.
9. “ ‘Proper’ Men and ‘Fallen’ Women: The Unprotectedness of Wives in Othello,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 34: 2 (1994), 341-356.Reprinted in Shakespearean Criticism: excerpts from the criticism of William Shakespeare's plays and poetry, from the first published appraisals to current evaluations. (Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research Co., 2002), Vol. 67.
10. “Men Beware Men: Shakespeare’s Warnings for Unfair Husbands,” Comparative Drama, 28: 2 (1994), 201-220.
11. “The Woman Hater as Beaumont and Fletcher’s Reading of Hamlet,” Hamlet Studies 17 (1995), 63-77.

Selected Chapters in Books

1.     “Sappho in India,” Chapter 32 in The Cambridge Companion to Sappho ed. Adrian Kelly and Patrick Finglass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 457-72.

2.     “A Web of Intimacies: Marriage in India, Cross-Sex and Same-Sex,” Chapter 13 in Courtship, Marriage, and Marriage Breakdown: Approaches from the History of Emotions ed. Katie Barclay, Jeffrey Meek, Andrea Thomson (New York: Routledge, 2020), 16 pages.

3.     “Male-Female Dialogues on Gender, Sexuality and Dharma in the Hindu Epics,” Chapter 13 in The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender ed. Veena Howard (New York: Bloomsbury Academic 2019), 299-323.

4.     “Goddess, Saint and Journeying Soul: Courtesans and Religion in Bombay Cinema,” Chapter 7 in Bad Women of Bombay Films ed., Saswati Sengupta et al (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2019), 113-130.

5.     “Still Flowing Rivers: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Hinduism,” in Hinduism and the Modern World ed. Brian Hatcher (New York: Routledge, 2016), 275-89.

6.     “Free to be Gay: Same-Sex Relations in India, Globalised Homophobia and Globalised Human Rights,” in Human Rights in Postcolonial India ed. Om Prakash Dwivedi and V. G. Julie (New Delhi: Routledge India, 2016), 315-32.

7.     “Hinduism,” in Struggling in Good Faith:  LGBTQI Inclusion from 13 American Religious Perspectives ed. Mychal Copeland and D’vorah Rose (Skylight Paths Publishing, 2015), 61-75.

8.     “India,” in The Fin-de-Siecle World ed. Michael Saler (New York: Routledge, 2014), 283-99.

9.      “°ä³ó²¹³Ù²ÔÄ«, Chocolate and ±ÊÄå²Ô: Food and Homoerotic Fiction,” in Gay and Lesbian Subcultures and Literatures ed. Sukhbir Singh (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2014).

1. “Lamb Unslain: Non-Human Animals and Shelley’s Panentheism,” in Godly Heretics: Essays on Alternative Christianity ed. Marc Paolo (McFarland & Co., 2012), 98-113.

11.  “Hinduism and Homosexuality,” in Queer Religion ed. Donald Boisvert & Jay Johnson (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012), Vol. I, 1-24.

12.  “More Lives than One: My Years in Manushi and the Women’s Movement,” in Making a Difference: Memoirs from a Movement ed. Ritu Menon (Women Unlimited, New Delhi, 2011), 11-36.

13.  “Democratizing Marriage: Custom, Consent and the Law,” in Law like Love: Queer Perspectives on Law ed. Arvind Narrain (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2011), 338-354.

14.  “Different Speakers, Different Loves: Urban Women in Rekhti Poetry,” in Subalternity and Difference: Investigations from the North and the South ed. Gyanendra Pandey (London & New York: Routledge, 2011), 57-76.

1.  “Naming Love: The God Kama, the Goddess Ganga, and the Child of Two Women,” in The Lesbian Pre-Modern ed. Noreen Giffney, Michelle M. Sauer and Diane Watt (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 119-30.
2.  “‘The Homoerotics of Travel: People, Ideas, Genres,” in The Cambridge Companion to Gay and Lesbian Writing (Cambridge Companions to Literature) ed. Hugh Stevens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 99-115.
3. “Uncovenanted Joys: Catholicism, Sapphism, and Cambridge Ritualist Theory in Hope Mirrelees’ Madeleine: One of Love’s Jansenists,” in Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives ed. Lowell Gallagher, Frederick S. Roden and Patricia Juliana Smith (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007), 85-96.

18.  “Together in Life after Life: Same-Sex Marriage and Hindu Traditions,” in Defending Same-Sex Marriage ed. Mark Strasser, Vol. II, Our Family Values: Same-Sex Marriage and Religion ed. Traci West (Praeger, 2006), 3-18.

19.  “ ‘Bringing Buried Things to Light’: Homoerotic Alliances in To the Lighthouse,” in   Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings, ed. Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer (New York:  New York University Press, 1997), 165-79. Reprinted in Illuminations: New Readings of Virginia Woolf ed., Carol Merli (New Delhi: Macmillan, 2004), 175-90.

20.  “‘At All Times Near’: Love between Women in Two Medieval Indian Devotional Texts,” in Same-Sex Love and Desire among Women in the Middle Ages ed. Francesca Canade Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 233-50.  Reprinted in Signifying the Self: Women and Literature ed. Shormistha Panja, Malashri Lal, et al (New Delhi: Macmillan 2004).

1. “Tragic Love and Cultural Convention: Reading The Well of Loneliness in India and the U.S.,” in Mastering Western Texts: Essays on Literature and Society for A.N. Kaul ed. Sambudha Sen (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 262-279.
2. “‘Shall We Part, Sweet Girl?’: The Role of Celia in As You Like It,” Yearly Review, 4 (1990), 43-55.  Reprinted in Critical Theory, Textual Application ed. Shormishtha Panja (New Delhi: Worldview Press, 2002), 128-42.

23.  “Dosti to Tamanna: Male-Male Love and Normative Indianness in Hindi Cinema,” in Everyday Life in South Asia ed. Diane Mines and Sarah Lamb (Indiana University Press, 2002), 146-58.

24.  “The Straight Path to Postcolonial Salvation: Heterosexism in the Indian Academy,” in  Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English: Positions, Pedagogies and Cultural Politics, ed. William J. Spurlin (Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2000), 272-87.

25.  “Embracing the Past by Retelling the Stories,” in A Sea of Stories: The Shaping Power of Narrative in the Lives of Gay Men and Lesbians, ed. Sonya Jones (New York: Haworth Press, 2000), 139-63.

26.  “‘What Sort of Beast Was I?: Thinking Beyond Gender in India,” in Gender and Politics in India, ed. Nivedita Menon (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). Reprinted in ‘Feminism’ in India ed. Maitrayee Chaudhuri (Series: Debates in Contemporary Indian Feminism ed. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, New Delhi: Kali for Women Press), 69-79.

27.  “‘Less Without and More Within’: The Rewriting of Male Remorse from Much Ado to Cymbeline,” in Shakespeare: Varied Perspectives, ed. Vikram Chopra, introd. Kenneth Muir (Delhi: B. R. Publications, 1996).

Publications

 The only book about the hundreds of young, low-income, non-English-speaking couples, mostly female, who have been getting married by Hindu rites or committing joint suicide as a form of union all over India, from at least 1980 to the present. 

   The first book to show how the figure of the courtesan shapes the modern Indian political, religious and erotic imagination. 

On Gender, Sex and the City:

This book explores the urban, cosmopolitan sensibilities of Urdu poetry written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Lucknow, which was the center of a flourishing Indo-Islamic culture. Ruth Vanita analyzes Rekhti, a type of Urdu poetry distinguished by a female speaker and a focus on women's lives, and shows how it became a catalyst for the transformation of the love poem. "The book belongs to my favorite genre, where the translations, excellent as they are, push the reader toward tasting the 'original.'' - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, series editor (with Hosam Aboul-Ela) of Theory in the WorldOn Love’s Rite:

"This absorbing new book…offers a marvelously global perspective characterized by profound historical understanding, impeccable scholarship, and a rare and delightful precision of feeling."
                      -    Terry Castle, Prof, Stanford University

On Sappho and the Virgin Mary:

The story of Mary is that she conceived her son immaculately, an autonomous creation without the intervention of a human male. This Marian ideal of feminine independence, suggests Ruth Vanita in her brilliant book, is one basis for the vast number of independent, unmarried female characters in British fiction. The poetry of Sappho, the direct antecedent of the confessional Romantic lyric, is the other. ... This well-researched, erudite survey shows how present lesbian dynamics have been throughout English literary history.

Ruth Vanita's Sappho & the Virgin Mary is an eloquent refutation of the conventional theoretical association of lesbianism with cultural invisibility. ...Vanita demonstrates that love between women has long constituted an enabling, enriching and ubiquitous component of the literary imagination for female and male authors alike. ... Intrepid, sophisticated, and worldly."

- Corinne Blackmer

Historical novel about a romance between two courtesans in 18th-century north India, and their friends who include poets and courtiers

Pioneering collection of extracts from 15 Indian languages composed over more than 2000 years, introduced and placed in context by the editors

Affiliations

Department of English

World Literatures and Cultures

Professional Experience

Founder co-editor of Manushi, India's first nationwide feminist magazine, 1978-91

Lecturer in English, Miranda House College for Women, and Reader, Department of English, Delhi University, 1976-1997.

Honors / Awards

Summer 2017 Franklin research grant to work on manuscripts in London Libraries

2015-16    Visiting Scholar, South Asia Centre & Centre for Film and Screen, Cambridge

                  University

2014     Featured in Vogue India (October 2014) “The Power of 50: 50 Women  

                             we Admire.”

2009        Delivered the Spalding Lecture on Indian Religions, Oxford University2007-08    

2007-08    Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship

2003-04     ACLS-SSRC-NEH Senior Research Fellowship

2004         One of ten women worldwide interviewed on film for the Global

                 Feminisms Project at the University of Michigan 

1997-present   Ten Merit Awards at the ÁÔÆæÖØ¿Ú for teaching, 

           scholarship and service

1994-95      Fellow at the Society for Humanities, Cornell University

Hobbies

Reading, conversation, movies