Description
Book SynopsisGendered Violence in Public Spaces: Women’s Narratives of Travel in Neoliberal India examines the vulnerability of women in public spaces in India through the analysis of artistic representations ranging from emerging digital media, commercial Hindi films and graphic narratives to narratives of real and lived experiences of women. In doing so, this volume initiates a scholarly discussion on the myriad challenges posed by male-dominated public spaces for the female traveler, demanding women’s rights as free and equal citizens who can fearlessly inhabit and explore public spaces and roads. Making the problem of women’s vulnerability in public spaces their chief focus, the contributing scholars highlight how ambitious and steadfast women who choose to contest the perils of the road are censured by manifold forms of emotional, mental, epistemic, and above all sexual violence. Gendered Violence in Public Spaces articulates the challenges associated with women’s mobility to inaugurate cultural and scholarly debates that may help India re-examine its public spaces against misogyny and gendered violence.
Trade ReviewWhat happens to women who travel? To those who transgress into male dominated spaces (e.g. the world)? Gendered Violence in Public Spaces provides insights to this question. Comprised of 12 beautifully written chapters, the book explores how women’s travel has been represented through literature, film, and print. Anxiety, anticipation, joy, risk, comfort, violence, vulnerability, and danger – these are all things the reader will encounter in this book which makes a valuable contribution to feminist geography, literature and media studies.
-- Kaitlynn Mendes, University of Western Ontario
Gendered Violence in Public Spaces makes an important contribution to the study of women’s writing from India that interrogates the vulnerability of women in public spaces. In bringing together theorization of space along with the work of feminist geographers, this book provides excellent readings of a range of literary texts, films, and television shows. This book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of South Asian, feminist, and literary scholars.
-- Nalini Iyer, Seattle University, Seattle University
Compelling and lucid, this anthology often veers into policy debates on reclaiming India’s public spaces rife with misogyny and sexual violence for the empowered female traveler. Its innovative and original approach brings value-addition to scholarship on female empowerment in the Indian subcontinent.
-- Gurumurthy Neelakantan, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Table of ContentsPart I: Hostile Terrains, Empowering Textual Spaces: Neoliberal Literature and the Female Traveler
Chapter 1. No Longer Innocent: Male Gaze, Violence, and Female Kinship in Kishwar Desai’s
The Sea of Innocence
Swathi Krishna S. and Srirupa Chatterjee
Chapter 2. Peripheral Urbanization as Queer Identity in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Jana Fedtke
Chapter 3.Mirrors of Reality: Toxic Masculinity, Traveling Women, and The Representation of Acid Attack Victim-Survivors in Priya’s Mirror
Nidhi Shrivastava
Part II: Bollywood’s Traveling Women (I): Misogyny, Roads, and Female Vulnerability
Chapter 4. Stepping Out: Global Bollywood, Gendered Landscape, and Undercurrents of
Neo-liberal Pleasures
Madhuja Mukherjee
Chapter 5. Celluloid Women Rewriting Rules of Travel in Contemporary Hindi Cinema
Rima Bhattacharya
Part III: Bollywood’s Traveling Women (II): Vexed Dualities of Freedom and Fear
Chapter 6. The Conditional Promise of Empowerment and Pleasure: An Intersectional Analysis of Hindi Film Portrayals of Women Navigating Public Spaces in India
Uttara Manohar
Chapter 7. Traveling Women and their Male Companions: Framing Risks and Vulnerabilities
in Indian Road Films
Pronoti Baglary
Part IV: Troubles of the Outdoorsy Woman: Multiple Genres/Multiple Voices
Chapter 8. Roads, Dreams, and Violence: Tracing the Mental Landscape of India’s Domestic Workers
Bonnie Zare and Ditto Prasad
Chapter 9. Negotiating Violence and Traversing the City: Female Vulnerability in Delhi Crime (2019) and She (2020)
Shreya Rastogi and Srirupa Chatterjee
Part V: Struggle for Survival: Working Women and Pitfalls of Indian Roads
Chapter 10. Working Night Shifts, Traversing Neoliberal Roads: Spatial-Temporal Confluence and the Male Gaze
Sucharita Sen
Chapter 11.Women Journalists Negotiating Space in India’s ‘Small’ Cities”
Ranu Tomar
Part VI: Traveling Solo, Traveling Strong: Women Braving Neoliberal Roads
Chapter 12.Travel with Care: Reinforcing Patriarchy through Tips for Solo Female Travelers in India
Kiranpreet Kaur Baath
