Background

Chitralekha Zutshi specializes in Modern South Asia, with particular interests in Islam in the Indian Subcontinent; interactions between religious identities, regional movements and nationalism in princely and colonial India; commodity and consumer cultures in Britain and colonial India; ideas of history and historiography in pre-colonial and colonial India; and empire. She received her PhD from Tufts University. Her book, entitled Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, was published by Permanent Black, New Delhi (2003); Hurst & Co., London (2004); and Oxford University Press, New York (2004).   The paperback edition of the book was published in 2011 by Permanent Black, New Delhi.

She is currently working on a long history of the historical imagination in Kashmir.  Her research seeks to place Kashmir within the larger South Asian and global contexts, in part through a study of the circulation and consumption of its material and literary commodities, including, for instance, Kashmiri shawls and Sanskrit texts such as Rajatarangini.  Several fellowships have supported her research, including the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2005-2006) and the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress (2008).

She teaches a variety of courses on South Asian history and the British Empire, including "History of South Asia," "Islam and Politics in South Asia," "Empire and Science in Colonial India," "Nation, Gender, and Race in British India," "Gandhi: Memory and Representation," "Bollywood and the Making of Modern India," and "Empires and Imperialism."  She is the founder and first director of the College's summer study abroad program in Goa, India.