Harleen Singh

Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies
Ph.D., University of California-San Diego

Current research
I am writing a book about a 19th century Indian queen, Rani Lakshmi Bai, who led her troops in battle against the British in the 1857 rebellion. I look at how she has been depicted in Victorian novels, postcolonial vernacular literature, folk narratives, film, comic books and textbooks taught in Indian schools. There is much interest these days within South Asian studies and Subaltern studies in reevaluating the cultural significance of major historical and literary figures, and this project is part of that.       

Favorite classroom experience
I taught a course called We Who Are at Home Everywhere: Narratives of the South Asian Diaspora, where we looked at literary and cinematic texts of immigrant South Asian communities, not only in the United States, but also in the Caribbean, Kenya and England. As part of the course, we took a field trip to “Little India” in Jackson Heights, N.Y. We drove to New York in a bus, and we sang the whole way. Our songs ranged from Christian spirituals to Israeli folk songs; from Indian film music to Caribbean Chutney music; from American popular songs to nursery rhymes! We learned more about each other in those songs — in our unguarded moment as a community singing together — than perhaps we ever do in the classroom setting.    

What makes Brandeis special
Its size and people. Brandeis has the resources and research capabilities of a large university, but with the size and culture of a smaller liberal arts college. This makes for greater interaction between faculty and students.

Last book read for pleasure
"Sacred Games" by Vikram Chandra.

Favorite world city to visit
New Delhi. It is home, and yet a space of exploration and discovery. I’ve never lived in the city, but I have visited it since I was a child, and have been witness to the changes in Indian political and cultural life. It is a city of multiple dwellings from many different ages. It was a place of governance from the earlier Hindu kings to the Turkish and Persian rulers, from Mughal emperors to British colonial occupation, and has been the capital of independent India since 1947. It is a city of Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jains, Buddhists and Christians. It is a city of slum dwellers and deluxe hotels — a mirror to India’s extremes of poverty and wealth, and to its future. It is deeply entwined with my scholarship, and it is also where the best food in the world is found on every street corner. It is home.