Education

Ph.D., University of California-Davis, 2009

M.A., University of California-Davis, 2002

B.A., Trinity University, 1998

Research Interests

Dr. Reddy’s Scholars@TAMU Profile

Vanita Reddy is a feminist scholar and cultural critic whose research focuses on the intersections of race, sexuality, and gender in global contexts. Dr. Reddy’s research focuses on practices of cultural identity, social belonging, and political community within the South Asian American and the global South Asian diaspora. It seeks to make visible subjects and populations who have occupied a historically marginal place within studies of diaspora and globalization, such as women, girls, service sector workers, undocumented migrants, and sexual minorities.

Honors and Awards

• 2018-2021 Arts and Humanities Fellow ($5,000/year for 3 years)
• Glasscock Internal Faculty Fellow (two-course teaching release for Fall 2018)
• Collaborative Grant, Lead Author, Glasscock Center for the Humanities, Fall 2016, $1,500 (with Chaitanya Lakkimsetti, Sociology, and Jyotsna Vaid, Psychology)
• Aggie Allies Rainbow Award for Accountability, Climate, and Equity (ACE) (TAMU, Department of Multicultural Services), 2016
• TAMU ADVANCE Scholar, 2015-2017
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Indiana University, Bloomington, Department of Gender Studies, 2013-14
• Program to Enhance Scholarly and Creative Activities Grant, TAMU Division of Research, 2011-2012 academic year, 2011

Publications

Reddy, Vanita.  Fashioning Diaspora:  Beauty, Feminity, and South Asia American Culture. Temple University Press, 2016

In her insightful study, Fashioning Diaspora, Vanita Reddy carefully maps how transnational itineraries of Indian beauty and fashion shape South Asian American cultural identities and racialized belonging from the 1990s to the late-2000s. She observes how diasporic subjects engage with and respond to various encounters with Indian beauty and fashion. One of the first books to consider beauty and fashion as a point of entry into an examination of South Asian diasporic public cultures, Fashioning Diaspora examines a range of literature, visual art, and live performance.

Watch Dr. Reddy’s book talk at NYU

Other Publications

• “Femme Migritude: Shailja Patel’s Afro-Asian Poetics,” The Minnesota Review 94 (2020): 67-84.
• “Feminine Vulnerability and Toxic Masculinity: A Comparative Feminist Analysis of #MeToo,” Rejoinder 4 (Spring 2019) (with Chaitanya Lakkimsetti).
• “Family Togetherness, Affect Aliens, and the Ugly Feelings of Being Included,” Feminist and Queer Theory Reader, eds. L. Ayu Saraswati and Barbara Shaw. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019.
• “Introduction: Feminist and Queer Afro-Asian Formations,” The Scholar and Feminist Online (March 2018), with Anantha Sudhakar
•  “Affect, Aesthetics, and Afro-Asian Studies,” Journal of Asian American Studies 20.2 (June 2017): 289-294.
•  “Diasporic Beauty and Fashionability,” Routledge Handbook of the Indian Diaspora, eds. Radha Hedge and Ajaya Sahoo. New York and London: Routledge, 2017: 183-199.  
• “Afro-Asian Intimacies and the Politics of Cross-Racial Struggle in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala. Journal of Asian American Studies.18.3 (Fall 2015): 233-63.
• “Jhumpa Lahiri’s Feminist Cosmopolitics and the Transnational Beauty Assemblage.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. 11.2 (Spring 2013): 29-59.
• “Beauty and the Limits of Belonging in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine,” Contemporary Literature. 54.2 (Summer 2013): 337-68.
• “Come for the Saris, Stay for the Politics.” Migritude. Shailja Patel. Kaya Press: New York, 2010. 141-47.
•  “The Nationalization of the Global Indian Woman: Geographies of Beauty in Femina,” Journal of South Asian Popular Culture (Spring 2006): 61-85.

Professional Links

• Podcast by New Books Network covering Fashioning Diaspora
• #MeToo and the Transnational Politics of Social Media Feminism