Quick Facts
Biography
Tejaswini Niranjana (born 26 July 1958) is an Indian professor, cultural theorist, translator and author. She specialises in culture studies, gender studies, translation and ethnomusicology, particularly relating to different forms of Indian music. She has an M.A. in English and Aesthetics from the University of Bombay, an MPhil in Linguistics from the University of Pune and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Life and work
She is the co-founder and a senior fellow at the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, where she was also Lead Researcher in the HEIRA Program. She was the Chair at the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai from 2012 till 2016. As of 2016, she is a professor and Head of Department of Cultural Studies, at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and Chair of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society.
She is the conceptualiser and co-producer of Jahaji Music, a documentary that looks at musical forms in the Indian diaspora in the Caribbean. She is also the author of Musicophilia in Bombay/Mumbai, which examines the cultural, political and geographical reasons why Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) became such a popular centre for Hindustani music.
She was a Distinguished Dellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore from 2013 till 2016 . She is also the recipient of the Sephis Postdoctoral Fellowship (1997-1999), Sawyer Fellow at the University of Michigan; Rockefeller Fellow, University of Chicago, and the Homi Bhabha National Fellowship. She was awarded the Central Sahitya Akademi Award for Best Translation Into English (1993), and the Karnataka State Sahitya Akademi Award for Best Translation (1994).
She has lectured in the West Indies, Brazil, South Africa, Japan, Taiwan, the U.S, and the U.K. She has been learning music for a decade from Mumbai-based Gwalior gharana singer Neela Bhagwat.
Publications
Books
Mobilizing India: Women, Migration and Music between India and Trinidad (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006)
Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)
Edited Volumes
Breaking the Silo: Integrating Science Education in India - With K.Sridhar and Anup Dhar, (Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2017).
Genealogies of the Asian Present: Situating Inter-Asia Cultural Studies - With Wang Xiaoming (Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2015).
Streevaadi Vimarshe - With Seemanthini Niranjana, in Kannada [Feminist Literary Criticism in India] (Bangalore: Kannada Sangha, Christ College, 1994).
Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India - With P. Sudhir and Vivek Dhareshwar, (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1993).
Selected Articles in Books
"Colonialism and the Politics of Translation", in An Other Tongue: Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic Borderlands, ed. Alfred Arteaga (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994).
"Colonialism and the Aesthetics of Translation", in Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India, (eds.) Tejaswini Niranjana, P. Sudhir and Vivek Dhareshwar (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1993).
"Translation, Colonialism, and the Rise of English", in Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History, ed. Svati Joshi (Delhi: Trianka, 1992).
“Indian nationalism and Female Sexuality: A Trinidadian Tale”, in Sex and the citizen: interrogating the Caribbean, ed. Faith Smith(Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2011).
“Hindi Cinema and Popular Music in Trinidad”, in Remembered Rhythms, (eds.) Shubha Chaudhuri and Anthony Seeger (Kolkata : Seagull Books, 2010).
“Gender and the Media: Problems for Cultural History”, in Re-Figuring Culture: History, Theory and the Aesthetic in Contemporary India ed. Satish Poduval (Delhi : Sahitya Akademi, 2005).
“Vigilantism and the Pleasures of Masquerade: The Female Spectators of Vijayasanthi Films”, in City Flicks, ed. Preben Kaarsholm(Roskilde University :
Occasional Paper Series, 2002).
“Nationalism Refigured: Contemporary South Indian Cinema and the Subject of Feminism”, in Community, Gender and Violence: Subaltern Studies XI, (eds.) Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2000).
(with Vivek Dhareshwar), “Kaadalan and the Politics of Resignification”, in Making Meaning in Indian Cinema, ed. Ravi Vasudevan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Selected Articles in Journals
“English Education in the Multi-lingual Classroom”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16:2 (2015)
“Culture, Feminism, Globalization”, Introduction to Special Issue-Women’s Studies, Economic and Political Weekly 50:17 (2015), April 25.
“Music in the Balance: Language, Modernity and Hindustani Sangeet in Dharwad”, Economic and Political Weekly XLVIII: 2, (January 12, 2013), 41-48.
“Why Culture Matters: Rethinking the Language of Feminist Politics”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 11:2 (2010), 229-235.
“Transported by Song: Music and Cultural Labour in Dharwad”, Sangeet Natak XLIII:2 (2009), 35-44.
“Teaching Gender Studies as Cultural Studies”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 9:3 (January 2008), 469 – 477.
“Feminism and Cultural Studies in Asia”, Interventions 9:2 (2007), 209-18.