Uma Narayan

Uma Narayan (born 16 April 1958) is a feminist scholar, and a Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College.

She is the author of Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminism in which Narayan disputes feminism as a solely Western notion, while challenging assumptions that East Indian feminism is based on Western models. Additionally, Narayan holds that the charges of what constitutes "Westernization" need to be radically re-examined.

Narayan coedited Reconstructing Political Theory: Feminist Perspectives with Mary L. Shanley, Having and Raising Children with Julia Bartkowiak and Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World with Sandra Harding. She currently is a professor at Vassar College on the Andrew C. Mellon Chair of Humanities.

Narayan received her B.A. in Philosophy from Bombay University and her M.A. in Philosophy from Poona University, India. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1990.

• Narayan, Uma (1997), "Contesting cultures : "Westernization," respect for cultures, and Third-World feminists", in Nicholson, Linda, The second wave: a reader in feminist theory, New York: Routledge, pp. 396–412, ISBN 9780415917612.