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SOUTH ASIAN REVIEW
Volume 29, Number 4 October 2008
Table of Contents
EDITOR’S COLUMN 11
GUEST EDITORS’ COLUMN 13
ABSTRACTS
Social Irresponsibility in Shani Mootoo’s He Drown She
in the Sea: Gendering the Axis between Nation and Diaspora
RANBIR BANWAIT 17
Outing the Archives: South Asian Sexualities in Print
KANIKA BATRA 18
Changing Frames of Desire: Premodern and Modern
KARNI PAL BHATI 18
Gender Constructions in the Sri Lankan Battlefield
SIMRAN CHADHA 19
“A Part of the History of Women of All Time”:
Myths in Jyotirmoyee Devi’s The River Churning
PAULOMI CHAKRABORTY 20
Virtual Equality, Real Difference: Gender, Globalization,
and Indian Communities Online
ROHIT CHOPRA 20
Reimagining Masculinity, Resisting Stereotypes:
Queer Passivity in Rabindranath Tagore’s “The Divide”
SUCHETA CHOUDHURI 21
The Forbidden “Other” as One among Many:
New Attitudes Toward Being Queer in Hindi Films
ELISABETH DAMBÖCK 22
Beyond the Patriarch?: A Feminist Reading of Amitav Ghosh’s
The Shadow Lines
SUKANTA DAS 23

The Mode of Mythic Realism in Bharati Mukherjee’s Writings
S. S. DEO and SUREKHA DANGWAL 23
An “Other” Jocasta: Folktale as Subaltern Gendered Discourse
of Resistance in a Globalized World
RENU DUBE 24
A Lesser Voice: Maithili Sharan Gupt’s “Urmila”
and “Yashodhara”
SHIRIN EDWIN 25
Matters of Imbalance: Representing Gender Conflict
in Parsi Fiction
SOHRAB HOMI FRACIS 25
Spatializations of Diasporic Queerness: Interpellative
“Home” Spaces and Articulations of Resistance
in Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy
RAHUL K. GAIROLA 26
Difficult Daughters: A Question of Women’s Freedom
JASPREET K. GILL 27
Vernaculars of Sex: Ginu Kamani’s “Ciphers”
KELLIE HOLZER 28
Sri Lankan Civil War and the Violence of Sexuality in Vimukthi
Jayasundara’s The Forsaken Land 29
NALIN JAYASENA
Sexuality, Class, and Consumption in Punyakante Wijenaike’s
Giraya
MARYSE JAYASURIYA 29
“Who da Man?” Vivek Sharma’s Bhoothnath and the Geopolitics
of Indian Masculinities
PRIYA JHA 30
Geography, Womanhood, and Nation in Bollywood Song Sequences
ALAN JOHNSON 31
Writing the Diaspora: Parsi Women Writers’ Home and Nostalgia
FEROZA JUSSAWALLA 32
Constituting South Asian Urban Queer Histories: Nigah, Delhi
AKHIL KATYAL 32
Effeminate Nationalists and Transgressing Women: Radical Text
and Famine Context in Krishan Chandar’s Anna-Daata
RAJENDER KAUR 33

Marital Rape in the Fiction of Subcontinental
Muslim Women Writers
HAFIZA NILOFAR KHAN 34
Tropes of Madness in Bengali Partition (1947) Literature:
Gendering and Subverting the Nation
MOSARRAP HOSSAIN KHAN 35
Conceptualization and Crystallization of Women’s Agency
NYLA A. KHAN 35
Feminism in Diaspora
ASHMITA KHASNABISH 36
The Challenge of Dalit Feminism
REVATHI KRISHNASWAMY 37
City Queers in Queer Cities: Stories of Postcolonial Sexualities
ELAKSHI KUMAR 38
What the Gates Cannot Contain: Intersections of Class, Gender,
and Religion in Parsi Fictions
CYNTHIA LEENERTS 38
Winged Horses and Floating Glass: Redemptive Metaphors
in Memoirs of Survivors of the Khmer Rouge
HEATHER LEVY 39
Gender and Sexuality in Selected Plays of Mahesh Dattani
SEEMA MALIK 40
Passing Fancy: Bodies and Boundaries in The Impressionist
J. EDWARD MALLOT 40
The Gendered “Limitations of the National Movement”:
Kamala Markandaya’s Some Inner Fury
HARVEEN MANN 41
Queered Queens: Sexual Empiricism and Gendered Empires
in Shekar Kapur’s The Bandit Queen and the Elizabeth Duology
PRATHIM MAYA 42
Gender Blending and the Appeal of Androgyny
ARCH MAYFIELD 42
Do “Dalit Women Talk Differently”?: The Possibilities of a Unique
Literary Space and Voice for Dalit Women Through
an Examination of Bama’s Autobiographies
ROGER MCNAMARA 43

“That Which May Not Be Spoken”: Homoerotic Desire
in the Writing of Ismat Chugtai and Alifa Rifaat
INDRANI MITRA 44
From Partition Violence Toward a Queer Citizenship
of Tolerance in India
NAMRATA MITRA 44
Marketing the Queer Desi Woman
MARY ANNE MOHANRAJ 45
Desigirls@blogspot.com: South Asian Cyberlogs and
the Postfeminist Debate
PIA MUKHERJI 46
“A Record of Our Lives”: The Autobiography and
the Politics of Lesbianism in India
SRIDEVI NAIR 47
Hyphenated Musings of a Self in Exile: The “Revolutionary Ethic”
of a Cross-Cultural Identity in Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines
ANU C. NARULA 47
Karo-kari and Chadors: Appropriation of Oppressors’ Tools
in Salman Rushdie’s Shame and Shirin Neshat’s Visual Art
MARGIE NELSON 48
Visualizing the Male Body in India: The Case of Saawariya
VAIBHAV I. PAREL 49
“I Don’t Have a Choice” But “I Desire to Live”:
Control, Surveillance, and Sexual Desire in Deepa Mehta’s Fire
PRABHJOT PARMAR 49
Gender Performance in Shani Mootoo’s “Out on Main Street”
and Shyam Selvadurai’s “Pigs Can’t Fly”
SUMMER PERVEZ 50
“What Do Women Really Want?”: A Comparative Gloss
of Gender and Desire in Fire and Monsoon Wedding
and Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”
MOUMIN M. QUAZI 51
The Tortured Tamil Body: Revealing, Performing, and Shaping
Masculinity
ANUSHIYA RAMASWAMY 52
The Books of Esther: Locations of Jewish Indian Women’s
Identity in Esther David’s Fiction
PALLAVI RASTOGI 52

An Ideal(ized) Woman: The Indian Lady of The Indian Ladies’
Magazine
SHESHALATHA REDDY 53
A Lesson in Laughter
KAREN REMEDIOS 54
Waiting for the Kiss: Politics of Queer Female Desire
in Fire and The World Unseen
BRYCE J. RENNINGER 55
“The Imprisoned Princess”: Veiling and Segregation in Sheema
Kermani’s Short Film
AMBER FATIMA RIAZ 55
“I Gotta Get off This Train”: Fetishizing and Orientalizing Rita
SARAH RINI 56
Compromising Positions: Transgressive Subjectivity of a South
Asian Canadian Lesbian in Farzana Doctor’s Stealing Nasreen
SHARANPAL RUPRAI 57
The Erotics of Nationalism in Tagore’s The Home and the World
POULOMI SAHA 57
Colonial Sexuality and Postcolonial Translation:
Aporias of Reading Texts
SUMANYU SATPATHY 58
Representing the State: Abduction and Recovery
in the Literature of Partition
BEDE SCOTT 59
Section 377 and the Politics of Performativity
NISHANT SHAHANI 60
Rushdie’s Occidentalism: Civilization and Gender
in The Enchantress of Florence
MAYA M. SHARMA 60
Gendering Nations: The Construction of Sikh Homelands
in Indian and Diasporic Imaginations
JASPAL K. SINGH 61
An Analysis of Socio-Political Constraints in the
Autobiographies of Rajput Women
JAYSHREE SINGH 62

Cinema, Culture, Queers, and the Woman: The Sexuality
Conundrum in India
PREM KUMARI SRIVASTAVA 63
Feminine Unworlding, Feminist Worlding: Women’s
Resistance in Mridula Garg’s Hindi Novel, Kathgulab
SHREEREKHA SUBRAMANIAN 63
Motherhood in Times of War in Tahmima Anam’s A Golden Age
and Jahanara Imam’s “Ekattorrer Dinguli”
REBECCA SULTANA 64
Retrieving the Lost Image: Mythological Women Characters
in Contemporary Indian Short Stories
MEENAKSHI SUNDARAM 65
“Because Fate Has Conspired to Make My Voice Heard”:
Voicing a Woman’s Rage in the Essays of Arundhati Roy
PENNIE TICEN 66
Writing for the Bandit: Narratives on Phoolan Devi
PUSAPATI TEJA VERMA 67
Women and Queer Figures in South Asian Diasporic
and Bollywood Films
CHRISTINE VOGT-WILLIAM 67
American Missionaries and Gender Politics in South Asia: Mark
Twain’s Following the Equator and Harriet Winslow’s Memoir
BRIAN YOTHERS 68
2008 CONFERENCE PROGRAM 71
2008 KEYNOTE SPEAKER 81
2008 SALA ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 83
2007 SALA ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 85
NAMES, AFFILIATIONS & E-MAIL ADDRESSES 101