Creating directions for gender history: Dr Rekha Pande

Dr Rekha Pande, Head Centre for Women’s Studies and Professor, department of History, University of Hyderabad, has received the prestigious, Visiting Fellowship in the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London for the year 2018-19.

While at Birkbeck, she would work on a project, Medieval misnomer: Female religious experiences and the politics of time, a comparison of public religious experience by women in the medieval-early modern periods (12th-17th centuries). This is an area on which she has already worked extensively in the context of south India, including female donations to religious establishments, the role of temple dancers (devadasis) and the role of women in religious reform movements.

Now, there would be an attempt to bring about a comparative and discursive framework, drawing on the expertise of the co-nominators and other members of Birkbeck’s scholarly community, to examine how Indian and European experiences have differed in, specifically, the area of public female religiosity.

During her time at Birkbeck, she would share her research in these themes with scholars and students at Birkbeck, to offer a public lecture and to research and deliver a keynote address for a colloquium on the subject of public female religious experience. A public lecture, aimed at an audience with a general, non-specialist interest in Indian history and the middle ages will also be organised.

This would focus on religious spaces and women in pre-colonial India, especially from the perspective of inscriptions and images. A workshop for students on key themes in gender history, rooted in her own work in India, creating a discussion on sources, the political and social role of history and future directions for gender history is also planned.