Richa Nagar

Richa Nagar is the inaugural Gloria Steinem ’56 Endowed Chair in Women and Gender Studies at Smith College.  Her multi-lingual and multi-genre work in transnational feminism and praxis & poetics of collaboration and co-authorship has evolved across the borders of India, Tanzania, & USA. This work agitates stabilized ways of knowing and telling through collective creativity to build enduring alliances with people’s struggles for justice.  As a scholar, writer, cultural worker, educator, and organizer, Richa refuses the borders of academia- arts-activism, while also re/telling, claiming, and theorizing the emotional, political, and analytical labors of such blurring and offering such critical concepts as situated solidarities, radical vulnerability, & hungry translations.

Richa has published nine books and dozens of essays, articles, plays, and poems (and their translations) in English and Hindi. Her work has been translated into German, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Marathi, Turkish, and Urdu. She has worked closely with the Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, a movement of farmers and laborers in India’s Sitapur District, since its founding, and she has co-created a multi-sited community theatre project called Parakh and the online journal, Agitate. Her many awards and honors include the 2021 International Studies Association’s Global Development Studies Book Award for Hungry Translations, the American Association of Geographers’ 2019 James Blaut Award for Socialist and Critical Geography, the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize Honorable Mention for Muddying the Waters, and the Russell M. and Elizabeth M. Bennett Chair in Excellence and the Beverly and Richard Fink Professorship in Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.  Her book with Sangtin Writers, Playing with Fire, appears on The Rumpus’s list of ‘What to Read When You Celebrate Women’s History.’ Richa has held visiting fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford University), the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study (Jawaharlal Nehru University), the Centre for Humanities Research  (University of the Western Cape), and the Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre (Savitribai Phule Pune University).

Books

• Richa Nagar. 2024. Radical Vulnerability: Development, Translation, Justice (South Asian Edition of Hungry Translations). New Delhi: Women Unlimited.
• Richa Nagar. 2019. Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
• Richa Nagar. 2014. Muddying the Waters: Co-authoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
• Eric S. Sheppard, Philip W. Porter, David Faust, and Richa Nagar. 2009. A World of Difference: Encountering and contesting development. New York: Guilford Press.
• With Sangtin Writers. 2006. Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism Through Seven Lives in India.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press & New Delhi: Zubaan Books (South Asian edition).
• (in Hindi) With Sangtin Samooh. 2004. Sangtin Yatra: Saat Zingiyon Mein Lipta Nari Vimarsh. New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan.

Edited Volumes

• Richa Nagar, Abdul Aijaz, and Nithya Rajan. Editors. 2024. Stories and Ecologies of Violence: Walking Together in Solidarity and Silence/ Chup. AGITATE! Vol 5 (Spring)
• Amanda Lock Swarr and Richa Nagar. Editors. 2010. Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis. Albany: SUNY Press.

Articles

• Richa Nagar, Isabel Meier, and Aila Spathopoulou. 2023. Reflections: “Refusals, Radical Vulnerability, and Hungry Translations: A Conversation with Richa Nagar.” FENNIA: International Journal of Geography (Special issue on politics of refusals). DOI: https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.121797

Films

In Hindi with English Subtitles

• 2023. खारी नदी के किनारे…मुमताज़ बेगम के साथ [Khari Nadi Ke Kinare… Mumtaz Begum Ke Saath]/ Along the Salty River, With Mumtaz Begum. Featuring Mumtaz Begum & Kausar Jahan in conversation with Richa Nagar. A film by Tarun Kumar. Video. 
• 2022. Playing with Fire: A Collective Journey. A celebration and discussion with Urvashi Butalia, Kalyani Menon-Sen, Prakash, Rambeti, Richa Nagar, Meera Sanghmitra, Richa Singh, and Surbala. Published by Zubaan Books, India. Video.