Durba Mitra studies gender in South Asia

Harvard’s first professor appointed solely in gender studies

Durba Mitra

Photograph courtesy of Durba Mitra

Three vintage Bollywood posters brighten Durba Mitra’s basement office in Boylston Hall, each representing an archetype of the Indian woman: Mughal-e-Azam, a classic film about a Mughal courtesan’s doomed romance; Daasi, about a low-caste woman; and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, depicting “the well-behaved housewife,” Mitra says. “So I have all of these ‘types’ of women.” Indian cinema is a personal interest for Mitra, an assistant professor of women, gender, and sexuality, but it also reflects her scholarly interest in gender in South Asia. As a graduate student at Emory, she remembers, “I thought I would write a history of prostitution in modern India. But I realized that to do that, I had to ask bigger questions. Why was a person considered a prostitute? When a woman is called a prostitute, she’s often, in fact, not one.” Her first book considers, more narrowly, how prostitution is linked to ideas about social progress in modern India. Mitra views herself as “a historian, first and foremost,” and gender studies as a commitment “to foregrounding gender and sexuality as important analytical categories in many disciplines” where often “gender is seen as an aftereffect of ‘real’ politics.” Mitra saw gender from a young age, she says, perhaps the result of an upbringing that set her apart from her North Dakota peers. Her mother, an immigrant from India, raised two children alone while working and pursuing a Ph.D. “She not only pushed to be independent and intellectual, she also adhered to her own imagination of her culture. She wore a sari every day in Fargo in the ’80s,” Mitra says. “People imagine the South Asian immigrant as a person who’s constrained by family expectations. That was not my experience. My mom always wanted me to imagine different possibilities.”

Read more articles by Marina N. Bolotnikova

You might also like

In Sermon, Garber Urges Harvard Community to ‘Defend and Protect’ Institutions

Harvard’s president uses traditional Memorial Church address to encourage divergent views.

This Astronomer is Sounding a Warning on 'Space Junk'

As debris accumulates in low Earth orbit, the danger of destructive collisions continues to rise.

Isaac Kohlberg to Step Down as Head of Harvard Technology Development

Partnerships and licensing office could become more critical as funding cuts loom

Most popular

Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts teaches the value of immersive attention

Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Jodie Foster Honored at Radcliffe Day 2025

The actress and director discussed her film career and her transformative time at Yale.

Explore More From Current Issue

Room filled with furniture made from tightly rolled newspaper sheets.

A Paper House in Massachusetts

The 1920s Rockport cottage reflects resourceful ingenuity.

Illustration of scientists injecting large syringe with mitochondria into human heart.

Do Mitochondria Hold the Power to Heal?

From Alzheimer’s to cancer, this tiny organelle might expand treatment options. 

James Muller in white lab coat leaning on railing in hospital hallway.

Free Speech, the Bomb—and Donald Trump

A Harvard cardiologist on the unlikely alliances that shaped a global movement to prevent nuclear war