Drishadwati Bargi

She/her.

Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature

364 Nicholson Hall

216 Pillsbury Dr SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Collegiate Affiliation

Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature

Drishadwati Bargi (she/hers) is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota. She is writing a dissertation on Dalit literature and cinema, where she is exploring the possibility of Socratic belonging in times of mediatized religious majoritarianism. She is particularly interested in the entanglement of philosophy, politics, and spectacle. She draws on postcolonial literary and media theorists, thinkers of anti-authoritarian politics, and post-68 French Marxist philosophy.

Her dissertation is tentatively titled Dalit visions in times of Spectacular Majoritarianism.

Educational Background & Specialties

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Educational Background

M. Phil: Women's Studies, Jadavpur University
M.A: English Literature, Jadavpur University
B.A: English Literature, Jadavpur University

Specialties

Feminist philosophy
Postcolonial literary and cultural theory
Biopolitics
Care of the Self
Theories of Revolution
Religious resistance
B.R Ambedkar
Guy Debord and theories of the spectacle.
Theories of Identities.
Adwaita Mallabarman.

Publications

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Publications

. “Why Should My Life be Sacrifice to One man?” The paradoxes of Dalit Militancy in Malika Amar Shaikh’s memoir, I Want to Destroy Myself in the Journal of Narrative Theory. Fall 2023.. .
(05, September, 2023). Review of The Vulgarity of Caste by Shailaja Paik: Dalits, Sexuality and Humanity in Modern India. Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory.
. “When the critic stumbles: legal violence and its unacknowledged terrain in Chaitanya Tamhane’s film Court”, Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 53. Issue No. 23, 09 June, 2018.. .
. “Understanding ‘Dalit Chetna’ in Adwaita Mallabarman’s A River Named Titash” in Contemporary Voice of Dalit 2015, Vol-(8), Page- 90-105.. .
. Dalitization of Civil Society: The Story of Round Table India Voice of Dalit 2014, Vol.7 (2), p.217-226. .
. "Readers of the Impossible Present" Response to Daniel J. Elam’s World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth (2021) for globalsouthstudies.as.virginia.edu, May 2023.. .
. Review essay of Soumyabrata Choudhury’s: Ambedkar and Other Immortals. An Untouchable Research Program (2018). Navayana. Cultural Critique, University of Minnesota. 2022.. .
. Review of Cressida Heyes' Anaesthetics of Experience, Megan Burks’ When Time Warps, Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai’s Experience, Caste and Everyday Social. philoSOPHIA A Journal of trans-Continental Feminism. 2021. .
. Review of Laura R. Brueck’s Writing Resistance. The Rhetorical Imagination of Dalit Literature (2014). 2017 Vol 38, No. 2. South Asian Literary Association. 2018. . .
. “Stating the Obvious: A Rejoinder to Nivedita Menon’s ‘From Feminazi to Rape Apologists’, in “Power and Relationships in the Academia”, Economic and Political Weekly. Vol.52. Issue No. 50. 16 Dec. 2017..
. Editorial in a volume of essays on Dalit student Rohith Vemula’s Suicide. Published in the eMagazine Café Dissensus Issue 59, September 24, 2021..
. When The Functional Is Political Is Personal …Witnessing The Many Battles Of Geeli Pucchi’s Bharati Mandal. Agitate: Unsettling Knowledges, June 20, 2023. .

Activities

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Activities

Professional

“The Boy Musn’t Play: Exploring The Dimensions of Violence in Nagraj Manjule's Fandry, a contemporary Dalit Cinema” SCMS 2022. (Presentation).
This-worldly necessity, other-worldly conscience: The memory-image of Buddha in Tulsi Ram’s Manikarnika a Contemporary Dalit Autobiography, ICGC Brown Bag Talk Series, January 28, 2022. (Presentation).: ICGC Brown Bag Series: Drishadwati Bargi - University of Minnesota - Kaltura MediaSpace (umn.edu).
"Hindutva as Spectacular majoritarianism: Constituent and critic" Panel proposal and presentation, Madison South Asia October,2022.
“On the Rejection of Ram Rajya: The Parrhesiastic Belonging of Bhanwar Meghwanshi, The Dalit who could not become a Hindu”, PAMLA 2021, November 2021. (Presentation).
“Revolution in the Mirror of Love: Facing the Failures in Malika Amar Sheikh’s memoir I Want to Destroy Myself”, Conference on Anti-Caste Thought: Theory, Politics and Culture. University of Wolverhampton, 28-29 th October 2021. (Presentation).

Awards

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Awards

2021 Summer Hella Mears Graduate Fellowship in European Studies
21st Century Departmental Language Fellowship, 2019. CSCL, University of Minnesota.
ICGC Fellowship, 2016 Interdisciplinary center for the Study of Global Change, University of Minnesota.
ICGC Fall 2021 Fellow.
Dissertation Development Fellowship 2022-2023.

Courses

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