Harleen Singh

Associate Professor of Literature, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

harleen@brandeis.edu
781-736-8485
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for the Humanities, 114

Departments/Programs

Comparative Humanities
Comparative Literature
German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature
International and Global Studies
South Asian Studies
Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Degrees

University of California, San Diego, Ph.D.
University of California, San Diego, M.A.
Sweet Briar College, B.A.

Expertise

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; South Asian Studies; Postcolonial Literature and Theory; Colonial Studies; South Asian Novel; Indian Film; Immigrant and Global Literature.

Profile

Harleen Singh is Associate Professor of South Asian Literature and Women's Studies. She and Sarah Lamb founded the South Asian Studies Program at Brandeis and Singh served as its Chair from 2007-2016. She is the faculty representative to the Board of Trustees at Brandeis. Her writing on novels from India and Pakistan, on Indian film, and book reviews on Hip-Hop music, sexuality, and feminism have been published in various leading journals. Her chapters on women warriors and South Asian women writers are included in seminal book collections. Her monograph, The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India (Cambridge, 2014), interprets the conflicting, mutable images of an historical icon as they change over time in literature, film, history, and popular culture. The book is in its second reprint and has been reviewed in The Telegraph, Economic and Political Weekly, The Book Review, BIBLIO, and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. Her interdisciplinary work in English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi is focused on women, history, politics, and identity in literature and film. Her next book, Contemporary Debates in Postcolonial Feminism, is being published by Routledge in 2021. Her current book projects include a critical translation of Amrita Pritam's seminal partition novel Pinjar and a monograph titled Half an Independence: Women, Violence, and Modern Lives in India. Professor Singh is a recipient of the ACLS Burkhardt fellowship and was a resident fellow at the National Humanities Center.

Courses Taught

COML	122b	Writing Home and Abroad: Literature by Women of Color
SAS	101a	South Asian Women Writers
SAS	130a	Film and Fiction of Crisis
SAS	140a	We Who Are at Home Everywhere: Narratives from the South Asian Diaspora
SAS	150b	Love, Sex, and Country: Films from India
WGS	5a	Women, Genders, and Sexualities
WMGS	135b	Postcolonial Feminisms

Awards and Honors

ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship (2017 - 2018)

National Humanities Center Fellow (2017 - 2018)

Senior Faculty Research Leave (2016)

Provost Research Award (2015)

Theodore and Jane Norman Award for Faculty Scholarship (2011)

Helaine and Alvin Allen Chair in Literature (2008)

Theodore and Jane Norman Award for Faculty Scholarship (2008)

Center for German and European Studies Travel Grant (2007)

Theodore and Jane Norman Award for Faculty Scholarship (2006)

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Gender and Postcolonial Studies (2003 - 2005)

University of California Faculty Fellowship (2002 - 2003)

Scholarship

Singh, Harleen. Contemporary Debates in Postcolonial Feminism. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2022. (forthcoming)

Singh, Harleen. "Interior Spaces in Tahmima Anam's A Golden Age." Teaching Anglophone South Asian Women Writers. MLA Options for Teaching Series, 2021

Singh, Harleen. "An International Student in America." Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography (2020): <https://antipodeonline.org/2020/09/29/an-international-student-in-america/>.

Singh, Harleen. "India’s Greatest Heroine: The many lives of Rani Lakshmi Bai, Queen of Jhansi." Women Warriors and National Heroes: A Global History. Ed. Boyd Cothran, Joan Judge and Adrian Shubert. Toronto: Bloomsbury, 2020. 23-38..

Singh, Harleen. "New Feminisms in South Asia: Disrupting the Discourse through Social Media, Film, and Literature." Rev. of New Feminisms in South Asia: Disrupting the Discourse through Social Media, Film, and Literature, by Sonora Jha and Alka Kurian, eds. Studies in South Asian Film and Media vol. 9.1 2018: 65-67.

Singh, Harleen. "Recalling Sahir Ludhianvi's Plea for Humanity as Religious Wrangling Rises." The Wire April 20, 2018: Religio

Singh, Harleen. "The Rani Rides Again: After Padmavati, Manikarnika’s Rani of Jhansi Gets Caught in the Crossfire." The Wire February 12, 2018: Fil

Harleen Singh. "Graphics of Freedom: Colonial Terrorists and Postcolonial Revolutionaries in Indian Comics." Postcolonial Comics Texts, Events, Identities. Ed. Binita Mehta, Pia Mukherji. Routledge, 2015. 142-156.

Singh, Harleen. "History's Witness." Rev. of Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary, by Anita Anand. BIBLIO: A Review of Books vol. XX of Nos. 7 & 8 July-August 2015: 21-22.

Singh, Harleen. "Review." Rev. of Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities, and Interwar India, by Stephen Legg. The American Historical Review vol. 120 (4) 2015: 1460.

Singh, Harleen. Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India. 1 ed. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Singh, Harleen. "Cultures of Music." Rev. of Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond, South Asian Diaspora vol. 5, No. 2 September 2013: 1-2.

Singh, Harleen. "Music and its Others." Rev. of Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness, by Nitasha Tamar Sharma. South Asian Diaspora vol. Vol. 5, No. 2, September 2013: 1-2.

Singh, Harleen. "Citizens of the World." Rev. of New Cosmopolitanisms, South Asians in the U.S., by Gita Rajan and Shailja Sharma. South Asian Diaspora vol. 4 No. 1 2012: 111-112.

Singh, Harleen. "Insurgent Metaphors: Decentering 9/11 in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 43. 1 (2012): 23-44.

Singh, Harleen. "While We Were Making History." Rev. of Making a Difference: Memoirs from the Women's Movement in India, by Edited by Ritu Menon. BIBLIO: A Review of Books vol. XVII of 3 & 4 March-April 2012: 21.

Singh, Harleen. "A Legacy of Violence: Interview with Kamila Shamsie about Burnt Shadows (2009)." Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 42. 2 (2011): 157-162.

Singh, Harleen. "Beyond the Tragic." Rev. of Room, by Emma Donoghue. Biblio: A Review of Books vol. XV of 11&12 November-December 2010: 10.

Singh, Harleen. "Deconstructing Terror: Interview with Mohsin Hamid on The Reluctant Fundamentalist." Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 42. 2 (2011): 149-156.

Singh, Harleen. "The Gendered Pen." Rev. of Leela's Book, by Alice Albinia. Biblio: A Review of Books vol. XVI. Nos. 7 & 8 July-August 2011: 15-16.

Singh, Harleen. "In the service of his sexuality." Rev. of A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster, by Wendy Moffat. Memoirs and Biography, Special Issue of Biblio: A Review of Books vol. XV of 7&8 July-August 2010: 8-9.

Singh, Harleen. "Jhansi ki Rani: Translating Rani Lakshmi Bai by Vrindavanlal Varma." Nationalism in the Vernacular: Hindi, Urdu, and the Literature of Indian Freedom. first ed. Ed. Shobna Nijhawan. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2010. 35-65.

Singh, Harleen. "Tur(Banned) Masculinities: Terrorists, Sikhs, and Trauma in Indian Cinema." Sikh Formations 2. 2 (2006): 115-124.

Singh, Harleen. "Acceptance and Identity." Rev. of The Impressionist, by Hari Kunzru. Globalization and Diaspora: Special Issue of the South Asian Review vol. 24:1 2003: 180-182.

Singh, Harleen. "Satirical Freedom and Myths of Modernity: R.K. Narayan's Painter of Signs." South Asian Review 23:1. (2002): 195-204.