R K Gairola
Biographic Data
| ID | 38832 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R K Gairola |
| GIVEN NAMES | R K |
| FAMILY NAME | Gairola |
| SIGNATURE | GAIROLA R K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Murdoch University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1826-6339 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Indian Paradigms of Sacred Ecosophy in the Works of Amitav Ghosh
This article examines the potential for an Indian paradigm of sacred ecosophy, also known as ecotheosophy, within the broader context of contemporary global environmental discourse. We critically survey how Indian philosophical and religious traditions, which recognise nature as a divine manifestation, could offer a unique eco(theo)sophical framework emphasising the spiritual interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. This Indian mo…
Maternal Ambivalence in Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi’s The Reluctant Mother
This article examines the concept of maternal ambivalence in the Indian cultural milieu through a critical analysis of Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi's The Reluctant Mother. These novels illustrate how societal glorification of maternal archetypes imposes significant emotional burdens on mothers who defy established norms, leading to inner conflicts laden with guilt, uncertainty, and the struggle to balance personal aspirations with soc…
Towards a Post-Colonial Eco-Cosmopolitanism
In an era of unprecedented global connectivity and ecological crises, the concept of “place” has been profoundly transformed within post-colonised communities. This study examines how literature, specifically Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner Than Skin (2012), as a medium can revive the sense of place, particularly the place sense redefined by the experiences of post-colonial eco-social catastrophes, as a dialogical co-habitation of human-non-human envir…
Worlding Postcolonial Sexualities
Viral Stagings Across the Globe
This special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies is titled ‘Performing Identity in the Era of COVID-19’, and co-mingles our current critical inquiries into the pandemic meaning of ‘performance’’ with our earlier research in global diasporas. While invoking our previous historical context of ‘the era of COVID-19’, we shift focus from migratory liminality to the many ways that we can re-think the notions of performance, performing, and pe…
Finding our way home
This brief-report details my experiences teaching critical theory at the intersection of race/ class/ gender/ sexuality/ nationality through analogue mapping exercises from my tutorial room at Murdoch University in Western Australia to a group mapping project at the 2018 Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria, Canada (UVic). Given the proximity of both countries to the history of the British Empire and current af…
Liminal diasporas in the era of Covid-19
As the end of the first quarter of the 21st century approaches, scholars of migration, diaspora, and empire studies are witness to global, interlinked crises that behove us to urgently rethink the
Of Indian Origin
Perhaps one of the least examined Indian diasporas of our time are desis who have migrated to or have been born in Australia within a tide of racist and xenophobic violence against them. Given its
Cyber Zones
This special issue of Asiascape on 'Digital Spatiality' emerges from a modest discussion on the limitations of discourses in the digital humanities at a public plenary in July 2017 at the annual European Summer University in Digital Humanities (ESUDH) at Leipzig University in Germany
The X factors of sex
This essay expands and transposes Kimberlé Crenshaw Williams’ notion of ‘intersectionality’ in the geographical and historical context of contemporary India. The article offers the theoretical heuristic of ‘intersex/tional’ identity to re-think the erotic lives of hijras in India following the Supreme Court of India's legal recognition of the so-called third gender. I begin by establishing a rationale for doing so, and then briefly move into a hi…
South Asian Digital Humanities Then and Now
The introduction to this special issue of South Asian Review assesses the history and present of South Asian studies and digital humanities. The essay begins by examining the South Asian Literary Association’s early support for this scholarship, both through conferences panels and publications. It further details the emergence of initiatives such as the Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) that have contributed to research at the nexus of …
Tools to dismantle the Master's DH(ouse)
This essay challenges the patriarchal and Eurocentric biases of the digital humanities (DH) by critically placing the field in a genealogy of postcolonial studies. I do so to counter the ‘genesis narrative’ of DH in which an Italian priest named Father Roberto Busa ‘pioneered’ humanities computing. I draw on postcolonial digital humanities and additional framings to demonstrate Empire's intentional unavailability of technological resources, like …
Postcolonial Biology
Brooms of Doom
This essay explores how current trends of xenophobic and class-based violence target women of color in a throwback to postcolonial studies. Representational discourses produce these subjects as gendered bodies whose ultimate difference lies in a postcolonial biology of difference that opens them to death. In particular, I unravel the tight braid of domesticity “at home” with the necropolitical prerogative of patriarchal hegemons in three key Hind…
Ambivalence and Security in the Anglo-American Empire
We began this dialogue with Homi K. Bhabha accepting our invitation for an interview at the Mahindra Center for the Humanities at Harvard University on Friday, May 9, 2015. Bhabha is a theoretical pacesetter and rigorous scholar of Anglophone literature who requires little introduction. As the Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, and the…
Geeta Patel. Risky Bodies & Techno-Intimacy
(2016). Geeta Patel. Risky Bodies & Techno-Intimacy: Reflections on Sexuality, Media, Science, Finances. South Asian Review: Vol. 37, The Miscellany, pp. 153-156
Limp wrists, inflammatory punches
In this essay, I read Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy as a ‘counter-bildungsroman’ narrative that braids together Radha Aunty’s transgressions of femininity with Arjie’s queer awakening amidst the heteropatriarchal violence of the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I situate this twinned discourse against the backdrop of domestic and institutional spaces that articulate exclusive identity formations and heteronormative ideals. I argue tha…
The realm of the polemic
A gaping chasm lies between the original context in which the concept of terror was defined and the ways this term is employed in contemporary socio-cultural frameworks. Whereas diverse forms of vi
A Critique of Thatcherism and the Queering of Home in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
(2011). A Critique of Thatcherism and the Queering of Home in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. South Asian Review: Vol. 32, 'On South Asian Diasporas', Guest Edited by B. P. Giri and Priya Kumar, pp. 123-137
Capitalist houses, queer homes
South Asian diasporic subjects have dealt with experiences of ‘home’ in various ways: ranging from the ostensibly failed assimilations of racialized subjects in their new homes to the nostalgia and trauma of exile felt in relation to former homelands. Most conceptualizations of home, in their privileging of racial formations that underpin Western racism, have elided questions of (homo)sexuality. This reading of My Beautiful Laundrette evinces the…
Section I
Could Edward Said have known at the time he wrote Orientalism that he would not only be revolutionizing the field of Middle East Studies and the disciplines at its core, but also a number of allied and aligned fields, one of which, Women's Studies, had not fully come into being? This presentation is about genealogies of knowledge, in this case Middle East gender studies. It is about counter-hegemonic thought, in this case, the rupture of the gene…
Teaching Amidst Terrorism
Teaching Amidst Terrorism: Hermeneutical Tensions in the Expository Classroom During the “New War”." South Asian Review, 23(2), p. 15
Conversations
Section I
Could Edward Said have known at the time he wrote Orientalism that he would not only be revolutionizing the field of Middle East Studies and the disciplines at its core, but also a number of allied and aligned fields, one of which, Women's Studies, had not fully come into being? This presentation is about genealogies of knowledge, in this case Middle East gender studies. It is about counter-hegemonic thought, in this case, the rupture of the gene…
Maternal Ambivalence in Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi’s The Reluctant Mother
This article examines the concept of maternal ambivalence in the Indian cultural milieu through a critical analysis of Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi's The Reluctant Mother. These novels illustrate how societal glorification of maternal archetypes imposes significant emotional burdens on mothers who defy established norms, leading to inner conflicts laden with guilt, uncertainty, and the struggle to balance personal aspirations with soc…
Liminal diasporas in the era of Covid-19
As the end of the first quarter of the 21st century approaches, scholars of migration, diaspora, and empire studies are witness to global, interlinked crises that behove us to urgently rethink the
Limp wrists, inflammatory punches
In this essay, I read Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy as a ‘counter-bildungsroman’ narrative that braids together Radha Aunty’s transgressions of femininity with Arjie’s queer awakening amidst the heteropatriarchal violence of the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I situate this twinned discourse against the backdrop of domestic and institutional spaces that articulate exclusive identity formations and heteronormative ideals. I argue tha…
Ambivalence and Security in the Anglo-American Empire
We began this dialogue with Homi K. Bhabha accepting our invitation for an interview at the Mahindra Center for the Humanities at Harvard University on Friday, May 9, 2015. Bhabha is a theoretical pacesetter and rigorous scholar of Anglophone literature who requires little introduction. As the Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, and the…
Conversations
Teaching Amidst Terrorism
Teaching Amidst Terrorism: Hermeneutical Tensions in the Expository Classroom During the “New War”." South Asian Review, 23(2), p. 15
Section I
Could Edward Said have known at the time he wrote Orientalism that he would not only be revolutionizing the field of Middle East Studies and the disciplines at its core, but also a number of allied and aligned fields, one of which, Women's Studies, had not fully come into being? This presentation is about genealogies of knowledge, in this case Middle East gender studies. It is about counter-hegemonic thought, in this case, the rupture of the gene…
Capitalist houses, queer homes
South Asian diasporic subjects have dealt with experiences of ‘home’ in various ways: ranging from the ostensibly failed assimilations of racialized subjects in their new homes to the nostalgia and trauma of exile felt in relation to former homelands. Most conceptualizations of home, in their privileging of racial formations that underpin Western racism, have elided questions of (homo)sexuality. This reading of My Beautiful Laundrette evinces the…
A Critique of Thatcherism and the Queering of Home in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
(2011). A Critique of Thatcherism and the Queering of Home in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. South Asian Review: Vol. 32, 'On South Asian Diasporas', Guest Edited by B. P. Giri and Priya Kumar, pp. 123-137
The realm of the polemic
A gaping chasm lies between the original context in which the concept of terror was defined and the ways this term is employed in contemporary socio-cultural frameworks. Whereas diverse forms of vi
Limp wrists, inflammatory punches
In this essay, I read Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy as a ‘counter-bildungsroman’ narrative that braids together Radha Aunty’s transgressions of femininity with Arjie’s queer awakening amidst the heteropatriarchal violence of the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I situate this twinned discourse against the backdrop of domestic and institutional spaces that articulate exclusive identity formations and heteronormative ideals. I argue tha…
Geeta Patel. Risky Bodies & Techno-Intimacy
(2016). Geeta Patel. Risky Bodies & Techno-Intimacy: Reflections on Sexuality, Media, Science, Finances. South Asian Review: Vol. 37, The Miscellany, pp. 153-156
Ambivalence and Security in the Anglo-American Empire
We began this dialogue with Homi K. Bhabha accepting our invitation for an interview at the Mahindra Center for the Humanities at Harvard University on Friday, May 9, 2015. Bhabha is a theoretical pacesetter and rigorous scholar of Anglophone literature who requires little introduction. As the Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, and the…
Postcolonial Biology
Brooms of Doom
This essay explores how current trends of xenophobic and class-based violence target women of color in a throwback to postcolonial studies. Representational discourses produce these subjects as gendered bodies whose ultimate difference lies in a postcolonial biology of difference that opens them to death. In particular, I unravel the tight braid of domesticity “at home” with the necropolitical prerogative of patriarchal hegemons in three key Hind…
Cyber Zones
This special issue of Asiascape on 'Digital Spatiality' emerges from a modest discussion on the limitations of discourses in the digital humanities at a public plenary in July 2017 at the annual European Summer University in Digital Humanities (ESUDH) at Leipzig University in Germany
The X factors of sex
This essay expands and transposes Kimberlé Crenshaw Williams’ notion of ‘intersectionality’ in the geographical and historical context of contemporary India. The article offers the theoretical heuristic of ‘intersex/tional’ identity to re-think the erotic lives of hijras in India following the Supreme Court of India's legal recognition of the so-called third gender. I begin by establishing a rationale for doing so, and then briefly move into a hi…
South Asian Digital Humanities Then and Now
The introduction to this special issue of South Asian Review assesses the history and present of South Asian studies and digital humanities. The essay begins by examining the South Asian Literary Association’s early support for this scholarship, both through conferences panels and publications. It further details the emergence of initiatives such as the Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) that have contributed to research at the nexus of …
Tools to dismantle the Master's DH(ouse)
This essay challenges the patriarchal and Eurocentric biases of the digital humanities (DH) by critically placing the field in a genealogy of postcolonial studies. I do so to counter the ‘genesis narrative’ of DH in which an Italian priest named Father Roberto Busa ‘pioneered’ humanities computing. I draw on postcolonial digital humanities and additional framings to demonstrate Empire's intentional unavailability of technological resources, like …
Of Indian Origin
Perhaps one of the least examined Indian diasporas of our time are desis who have migrated to or have been born in Australia within a tide of racist and xenophobic violence against them. Given its
Finding our way home
This brief-report details my experiences teaching critical theory at the intersection of race/ class/ gender/ sexuality/ nationality through analogue mapping exercises from my tutorial room at Murdoch University in Western Australia to a group mapping project at the 2018 Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria, Canada (UVic). Given the proximity of both countries to the history of the British Empire and current af…
Liminal diasporas in the era of Covid-19
As the end of the first quarter of the 21st century approaches, scholars of migration, diaspora, and empire studies are witness to global, interlinked crises that behove us to urgently rethink the
Worlding Postcolonial Sexualities
Viral Stagings Across the Globe
This special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies is titled ‘Performing Identity in the Era of COVID-19’, and co-mingles our current critical inquiries into the pandemic meaning of ‘performance’’ with our earlier research in global diasporas. While invoking our previous historical context of ‘the era of COVID-19’, we shift focus from migratory liminality to the many ways that we can re-think the notions of performance, performing, and pe…
Towards a Post-Colonial Eco-Cosmopolitanism
In an era of unprecedented global connectivity and ecological crises, the concept of “place” has been profoundly transformed within post-colonised communities. This study examines how literature, specifically Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner Than Skin (2012), as a medium can revive the sense of place, particularly the place sense redefined by the experiences of post-colonial eco-social catastrophes, as a dialogical co-habitation of human-non-human envir…
Maternal Ambivalence in Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi’s The Reluctant Mother
This article examines the concept of maternal ambivalence in the Indian cultural milieu through a critical analysis of Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi's The Reluctant Mother. These novels illustrate how societal glorification of maternal archetypes imposes significant emotional burdens on mothers who defy established norms, leading to inner conflicts laden with guilt, uncertainty, and the struggle to balance personal aspirations with soc…
Indian Paradigms of Sacred Ecosophy in the Works of Amitav Ghosh
This article examines the potential for an Indian paradigm of sacred ecosophy, also known as ecotheosophy, within the broader context of contemporary global environmental discourse. We critically survey how Indian philosophical and religious traditions, which recognise nature as a divine manifestation, could offer a unique eco(theo)sophical framework emphasising the spiritual interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. This Indian mo…
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · History (10 works) · Art (9 works) · History (9 works) · Media studies (8 works)