Sharmila Lodhia is an Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Santa Clara University. She earned her J.D. from Hastings College of Law in San Francisco and her Ph.D. in Women's Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research examines legal responses to violence against Indian women through a transnational lens, highlighting the impact of migrating spouses, traveling cultures and shifting bodies of law in the diaspora. Her work has been published in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, WSQ, Violence Against Women and theColumbia Journal of Gender and Law. She was a co-editor of a book entitled, New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights published by Routledge in 2011. Her current research examines the contradictions and complexities of global advocacy for women and specifically why certain dominant frameworks of intervention can hinder rather than advance women's rights.
Research Interests
Violence against women
Transnational feminisms
Postcolonial legal studies
Gender and popular culture
Courses
- WGST 11A/12A Women in Transnational Perspective
- WGST 50 Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
- WGST 101 Feminist Theory
- WGST 104 Beauty, Culture and Society in Global Age
- WGST 127 Women and Law
Publications
Representative Publications
“Deconstructing Sita's Blues: Questions of Mis/representation, Cultural Property, and Feminist Critique in Nina Paley's Ramayana,” (Forthcoming in Feminist Studies, 2015)
“‘Stop Importing Weapons of Family Destruction!’ Cyberdiscourses, Patriarchal Anxieties and the Male Backlash Movement in India,” Violence Against Women, Vol. 20, Num. 8 (August 2014).
“Brides without Borders: New Topographies of Violence and the Future of Law in an Era of Transnational Citizen-Subjects,” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Vol. 19 Num. 3 (September 2010).
“Constructing an Imperfect Citizen-Subject: Globalization, National ‘Security’ and Violence Against South Asian Women,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 38 Numbers 1 & 2, (Spring/Summer 2010).