Gowri Vijayakumar

Assistant Professor of Sociology

gowri@brandeis.edu

Departments/Programs

Sociology
South Asian Studies

Degrees

University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.
University of California, Berkeley, M.A.
Harvard University, M.Ed.
Brown University, A.B.

Expertise

Gender, Sexuality, Social Movements, Development, Feminist and Postcolonial Theory, Global and Transnational Sociology, Labor, HIV/AIDS, Ethnographic and Interview Methods, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa

Profile

Gowri Vijayakumar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research and teaching places gender, sexuality, development programs, and social movements in transnational perspective. In particular, her work explores how transnational forces intersect with local gendered politics in the formation of personal and collective identities. Most of her research focuses on India.

Her current book project uses over 150 in-depth interviews alongside participant observation across India and Kenya to study the transnational circulation of HIV/AIDS programs. The project focuses on how activist groups of sex workers and LGBTIQ people engaged, and often challenged, corporate donors, state agencies, and biomedical experts; became central to India's HIV/AIDS response; and transformed themselves in the process. Moving across the spaces of everyday life, grassroots HIV prevention, and NGOs, Viral Politics shows that the AIDS epidemic generated a new terrain for articulating Indian sexual identity, both within and beyond India's borders.

In a previous project, Professor Vijayakumar examined gendered differences in young people’s articulations of their aspirations in relation to the global knowledge economy in a small town outside Bangalore. In future work, she plans to extend her study of gender, sexuality, and political life in Bangalore and its outskirts.

Courses Taught

HIST/SOC	170b	Gender and Sexuality in South Asia
SOC	124a	Gender, Sexuality, and Globalization
SOC	150a	HIV/AIDS, Society, and Politics
SOC	155b	Protest, Politics, and Change: Social Movements
SOC	209b	Social Movements
SOC	228b	Gender and Sexuality in Transnational Perspective
SOC	300a	Approaches to Sociological Research

Awards and Honors

Mandel Faculty Grant in the Humanities (2019)

Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship (2012 - 2013)

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2010 - 2014)

Scholarship

Vijayakumar, Gowri. "Sexual laborers and entrepreneurial women: Articulating collective identity in India's HIV/AIDS response." Social Problems (2019). (forthcoming)

Vijayakumar, Gowri and Maich, Katherine. "Politicizing gender: Feminist movements." The Social Life of Gender: From Analysis to Critique. Ed. Jennifer Carlson, Abigail Andrews, and Raka Ray. New York: Sage, 2018

Vijayakumar, Gowri. "Collective demands and secret codes: The multiple uses of "community" in "community mobilization"." World Development 104. (2018): 173-182.

Vijayakumar, Gowri. "Is sex work sex or work? Forming collective identity in Bangalore." Qualitative Sociology 41. 3 (2018): 337-360.

Vijayakumar, Gowri, Chacko, Shubha, and Panchanadeswaran, Subadra. ""As human beings and as workers": Sex worker unionization in Bangalore, India." Global Labour Journal (2015).

Vijayakumar, Gowri. ""I'll be like water": Gender, class, and flexible aspirations at the edge of India's knowledge economy." Gender & Society 27. 6 (2013): 777-798.