Sailaja Krishnamurti

Associate Professor
Affiliation(s): 
Queen's University
Department: 
Gender Studies
Email: 
sailaja.krishnamurti@queensu.ca
Research thematic keywords: 
Race, Caste, Gender, Diaspora, Hindus, Migration
Research region keywords: 
India, Singapore, Canada, Caribbean

My research takes a critical race feminist approach to the politics of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary South Asian religions and cultures. As an interdisciplinary researcher, I situate my work in conversation with scholarship in Religious Studies, South Asian Studies, and Women & Gender Studies. My practice employs textual and visual studies and draws on field research in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and North America.
The topics explored in my published research and other scholarship might seem eclectic, but they proceed from three interconnected lines of interdisciplinary inquiry:

  1. Culture and representation: How are ideas about religion, race and gender fashioned through literary and cultural representations?
  2. Diaspora and transnational circulations: How do transnational discourses about race, nation, and colonialism shape contemporary perspectives on religion and identity in diaspora?
  3. Epistemologies of race and gender: How might critical race theory productively unsettle the feminist study of religion?

I am interested in collaborating and building community with other scholars of diasporic South Asian religions and building a critical caste studies network.