Niharika Banerjea
Biographic Data
| ID | 669640 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Niharika Banerjea |
| GIVEN NAMES | Niharika |
| FAMILY NAME | Banerjea |
| SIGNATURE | BANERJEA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern Indiana |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8329-5267 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Lesbian in/from South Asia: Erotic and political geographies
This special issue emerged from a two-pronged question: what it means to be lesbian in/from South Asia and what it means to be so in the contemporary moment. The contemporary is marked by both enduring and emergent forms of precarities, changing strategies of survival, intensified digitalization and transformations in global queer politics. Seeking to open up the ideas of "lesbian" and "South Asia" both individually and in relation to each other,…
A collaborative dialogue about nurturing with/in queerness
We are a group of four persons, assigned female at birth, identifying as queer and non-binary, residing in India. We ruminate about the need and politics of queer nurturing. Drawing from our own and our friends’ fragmented life histories, we wonder about the elements of nurturing, such as intergenerational allyship, friendship and kinship, that shape our present. Our rumination and writing are collaborative. We have received formal academic train…
Companionship, kinship and continuum: Reflections with lesbian identifying older persons in Mumbai and Kolkata
When Adrienne Rich wrote Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence , she indicated the erasure of lesbian lives from heteronormative life worlds in the Anglo-American context. Lesbian existence is a critical way of fighting compulsory heterosexuality and speaks of bonds and friendships that go beyond sexual desire between two cis women. With the concept of the lesbian continuum, Adrienne Rich represented woman-identified experiences that c…
Is another liveability possible? Articulating caste and lesbian worldmaking from India
In this paper, we use collaborative forms of writing to ask if another liveability is possible. We attempt to articulate caste and lesbian worldmaking in the context of the COVID-19-induced lockdown through a walking interview with Urmila, a Dalit queer labour union organizer. The walking interview with Urmila happened within the conceptual parameters of what we term ‘urgent witnessing’, a methodological stance involving sharing and documentation…
Liveable Lives: Living and Surviving LGBTQ Equalities in India and the UK
Liveable Lives examines what makes life liveable for LGBTQ+ people beyond equality reforms. It refuses the colonizing narrative of surviving in a ‘regressive’ Global South and thriving in a ‘progressive’ Global North. By linking the concept of liveability with the decolonial literature on sexualities, this open access book draws on individual's stories, art and writing to examine how lives become liveable across India and the UK, providing a mult…
Homopopulism: A new layer of LGBTQ politics in India
This paper seeks to conceptualize homopopulism as a popular relationality in shifting contexts of inclusion/exclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) identified persons. A new layer of queer politics is visible in contemporary India. Hinged between older colonial discourses, current neoliberal systems, and promises by state actors to include LGBTQ concerns, sexuality is explicitly and implicitly mobilized to create, claim, a…
More than happiness: Aliveness and struggle in lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer lives
Happiness is often seen as the product of a good life, and can be attached to normative institutions such as marriage. The pursuit of happiness has been critically scrutinised, including by queer theorists and particularly Sara Ahmed who proposes a concept of aliveness. This article explores what it means to put liveability into conversation with critical engagements with happiness. Using transnational empirical material regarding what makes live…
Survival and liveability in #Covidtimes: Queer women’s transnational witnessing of Covid-19
Exploring liveabilities as more than survival, this commentary underscores how survival remains important in these #COVIDtimes. Discussing our privileges and resistances as queer women with various intersectionalities, we offer transnational notes on negotiating, surviving, and living in these non-normative times
Lesbian Feminism: Essays Opposing Global Heteropatriarchies
Drawing on the incredible wealth of diversity of languages, cultures and movements in which lesbian feminisms have been articulated, this book confronts the historic devaluation of lesbian-feminist politics within Anglo-American discourse and ignites a transnational and transgenerational discussion regarding the relevance of lesbian feminisms in today’s world, a discussion that challenges the view of lesbian feminism as static and essentialist. T…
The limits of legislative change: Moving beyond inclusion/exclusion to create ‘a life worth living’
While the spatializations of social exclusion have long been critically assessed, legislative responses to these exclusions have also been found to be limited. Addressing the exclusions of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans* and Queer people, social inclusions in the form of equalities legislations have been used as a marker of ‘progress’ and development, creating neo-colonial geographic comparisons between the legal and policy regimes of different contexts…
Towards transnational feminist queer methodologies
This article introduces the possibilities of transnational feminist queer research as seeking to conceptualise the transnational as a methodology composed of a series of flows that can augment feminist and queer research. Transnational feminist queer methodologies can contest long-standing configurations of power between researcher and researched, subject and object, academics and activists across places, typically those which are embedded in the…
Critical urban collaborative ethnographies: Articulating community with Sappho for Equality in Kolkata, India
This article reflects on the notion of community through a collaborative ethnographic study with women loving women in Kolkata. Performing critical urban ethnographies in the global south and writing about sexualities that defy easy spatial categorizations are vital for those who seek to extend the scholarship of sexualities beyond the ‘gayborhood paradigm’ in the global north. This article focuses on how women loving women understand community a…
Voluntary participation and poor women's work: A critical examination of a community health improvement initiative in a Kolkata slum
Voluntary participation is a development practice that incorporates and ‘empowers’ marginalized populations by recruiting them as volunteers in community improvement programs in the global south. In India, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) commonly recruit female volunteers in urban slums to ‘participate’ in the improvement of reproductive and child health care needs in the community. In the volunteering literature, the practice is examined a…
Voluntary Participation and Self-Governance: A Study of Community Health Volunteering in Kolkata, India
Participatory strategies have generated a critical body of work examining the meaning of empowerment and urban policy-making in societies undergoing a shift from government to governance. Discussions on the institutionalized limits of participatory policies and genealogies of participatory discourses have often shed inadequate light on the perspective of the economically marginalized. My study draws from ethnographic fieldwork in an urban slum in…
Towards transnational feminist queer methodologies
This article introduces the possibilities of transnational feminist queer research as seeking to conceptualise the transnational as a methodology composed of a series of flows that can augment feminist and queer research. Transnational feminist queer methodologies can contest long-standing configurations of power between researcher and researched, subject and object, academics and activists across places, typically those which are embedded in the…
The limits of legislative change: Moving beyond inclusion/exclusion to create ‘a life worth living’
While the spatializations of social exclusion have long been critically assessed, legislative responses to these exclusions have also been found to be limited. Addressing the exclusions of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans* and Queer people, social inclusions in the form of equalities legislations have been used as a marker of ‘progress’ and development, creating neo-colonial geographic comparisons between the legal and policy regimes of different contexts…
Critical urban collaborative ethnographies: Articulating community with Sappho for Equality in Kolkata, India
This article reflects on the notion of community through a collaborative ethnographic study with women loving women in Kolkata. Performing critical urban ethnographies in the global south and writing about sexualities that defy easy spatial categorizations are vital for those who seek to extend the scholarship of sexualities beyond the ‘gayborhood paradigm’ in the global north. This article focuses on how women loving women understand community a…
Survival and liveability in #Covidtimes: Queer women’s transnational witnessing of Covid-19
Exploring liveabilities as more than survival, this commentary underscores how survival remains important in these #COVIDtimes. Discussing our privileges and resistances as queer women with various intersectionalities, we offer transnational notes on negotiating, surviving, and living in these non-normative times
Voluntary participation and poor women's work: A critical examination of a community health improvement initiative in a Kolkata slum
Voluntary participation is a development practice that incorporates and ‘empowers’ marginalized populations by recruiting them as volunteers in community improvement programs in the global south. In India, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) commonly recruit female volunteers in urban slums to ‘participate’ in the improvement of reproductive and child health care needs in the community. In the volunteering literature, the practice is examined a…
Voluntary participation and poor women's work: A critical examination of a community health improvement initiative in a Kolkata slum
Voluntary participation is a development practice that incorporates and ‘empowers’ marginalized populations by recruiting them as volunteers in community improvement programs in the global south. In India, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) commonly recruit female volunteers in urban slums to ‘participate’ in the improvement of reproductive and child health care needs in the community. In the volunteering literature, the practice is examined a…
Voluntary Participation and Self-Governance: A Study of Community Health Volunteering in Kolkata, India
Participatory strategies have generated a critical body of work examining the meaning of empowerment and urban policy-making in societies undergoing a shift from government to governance. Discussions on the institutionalized limits of participatory policies and genealogies of participatory discourses have often shed inadequate light on the perspective of the economically marginalized. My study draws from ethnographic fieldwork in an urban slum in…
Critical urban collaborative ethnographies: Articulating community with Sappho for Equality in Kolkata, India
This article reflects on the notion of community through a collaborative ethnographic study with women loving women in Kolkata. Performing critical urban ethnographies in the global south and writing about sexualities that defy easy spatial categorizations are vital for those who seek to extend the scholarship of sexualities beyond the ‘gayborhood paradigm’ in the global north. This article focuses on how women loving women understand community a…
Towards transnational feminist queer methodologies
This article introduces the possibilities of transnational feminist queer research as seeking to conceptualise the transnational as a methodology composed of a series of flows that can augment feminist and queer research. Transnational feminist queer methodologies can contest long-standing configurations of power between researcher and researched, subject and object, academics and activists across places, typically those which are embedded in the…
Lesbian Feminism: Essays Opposing Global Heteropatriarchies
Drawing on the incredible wealth of diversity of languages, cultures and movements in which lesbian feminisms have been articulated, this book confronts the historic devaluation of lesbian-feminist politics within Anglo-American discourse and ignites a transnational and transgenerational discussion regarding the relevance of lesbian feminisms in today’s world, a discussion that challenges the view of lesbian feminism as static and essentialist. T…
The limits of legislative change: Moving beyond inclusion/exclusion to create ‘a life worth living’
While the spatializations of social exclusion have long been critically assessed, legislative responses to these exclusions have also been found to be limited. Addressing the exclusions of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans* and Queer people, social inclusions in the form of equalities legislations have been used as a marker of ‘progress’ and development, creating neo-colonial geographic comparisons between the legal and policy regimes of different contexts…
More than happiness: Aliveness and struggle in lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer lives
Happiness is often seen as the product of a good life, and can be attached to normative institutions such as marriage. The pursuit of happiness has been critically scrutinised, including by queer theorists and particularly Sara Ahmed who proposes a concept of aliveness. This article explores what it means to put liveability into conversation with critical engagements with happiness. Using transnational empirical material regarding what makes live…
Survival and liveability in #Covidtimes: Queer women’s transnational witnessing of Covid-19
Exploring liveabilities as more than survival, this commentary underscores how survival remains important in these #COVIDtimes. Discussing our privileges and resistances as queer women with various intersectionalities, we offer transnational notes on negotiating, surviving, and living in these non-normative times
Liveable Lives: Living and Surviving LGBTQ Equalities in India and the UK
Liveable Lives examines what makes life liveable for LGBTQ+ people beyond equality reforms. It refuses the colonizing narrative of surviving in a ‘regressive’ Global South and thriving in a ‘progressive’ Global North. By linking the concept of liveability with the decolonial literature on sexualities, this open access book draws on individual's stories, art and writing to examine how lives become liveable across India and the UK, providing a mult…
Homopopulism: A new layer of LGBTQ politics in India
This paper seeks to conceptualize homopopulism as a popular relationality in shifting contexts of inclusion/exclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) identified persons. A new layer of queer politics is visible in contemporary India. Hinged between older colonial discourses, current neoliberal systems, and promises by state actors to include LGBTQ concerns, sexuality is explicitly and implicitly mobilized to create, claim, a…
Is another liveability possible? Articulating caste and lesbian worldmaking from India
In this paper, we use collaborative forms of writing to ask if another liveability is possible. We attempt to articulate caste and lesbian worldmaking in the context of the COVID-19-induced lockdown through a walking interview with Urmila, a Dalit queer labour union organizer. The walking interview with Urmila happened within the conceptual parameters of what we term ‘urgent witnessing’, a methodological stance involving sharing and documentation…
Lesbian in/from South Asia: Erotic and political geographies
This special issue emerged from a two-pronged question: what it means to be lesbian in/from South Asia and what it means to be so in the contemporary moment. The contemporary is marked by both enduring and emergent forms of precarities, changing strategies of survival, intensified digitalization and transformations in global queer politics. Seeking to open up the ideas of "lesbian" and "South Asia" both individually and in relation to each other,…
A collaborative dialogue about nurturing with/in queerness
We are a group of four persons, assigned female at birth, identifying as queer and non-binary, residing in India. We ruminate about the need and politics of queer nurturing. Drawing from our own and our friends’ fragmented life histories, we wonder about the elements of nurturing, such as intergenerational allyship, friendship and kinship, that shape our present. Our rumination and writing are collaborative. We have received formal academic train…
Companionship, kinship and continuum: Reflections with lesbian identifying older persons in Mumbai and Kolkata
When Adrienne Rich wrote Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence , she indicated the erasure of lesbian lives from heteronormative life worlds in the Anglo-American context. Lesbian existence is a critical way of fighting compulsory heterosexuality and speaks of bonds and friendships that go beyond sexual desire between two cis women. With the concept of the lesbian continuum, Adrienne Rich represented woman-identified experiences that c…
Queer (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (9 works) · Law (8 works) · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues (7 works) · Lesbian (7 works) · Gender Studies (5 works)