Publications

Coedited volume on Crime Fiction in Vernacular South Asia (under contract), forthcoming 2026.

Coedited special issue on Female Travelling Performers in South Asia in an international peer reviewed journal, forthcoming 2026.

'The Garden, the Court, the Kotha and the Recording Studio: The Many Performing Spaces of the Tawa’if' in Katherine Schofield and Margaret E Walker eds. Hindustani Music Between Empires: Relational Histories, Primus Books, forthcoming 2025.

'A Conversation on Feminist Digital Humanities.' Frazier, Jessica, Tamar Carroll, Shweta Sachdeva Jha, and Leandra Zarnow, Journal of Feminist Scholarship 26 (Spring): 10.23860/jfs.2025.26.02. digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/vol26/iss26/2/ 

'The Tawa’if in Colonial India: Changing Livelihoods and Emerging Technologies (1790s-1920s)’ in Anna Morcom and Neelam Raina eds. Creative Economies of Culture in South Asia: Craftspeople and Performers (Routledge, 2025), 89-99.

Bathing Women: Desire, Wonder, and Water in Versions of a Persian Tale, Editorial Feature, 2024 (Commissioned Editorial Feature/Curationist Mhz Foundation Fellowship)

'Songbook to the Postcard: Courtesans and Their Forgotten Cultural Legacy' in Seema Bhalla ed. Ganika: In the Visual Culture of the 19th to 20th Century India (Art  & Deal, 2024), 92-108. (Commissioned/Crafts Museum, Delhi)

'The Women of Miranda House: Building Archival Collections, Digital Humanities and Feminist Digital History', South Asian Popular Culture 2023, 21:3, 279-289, DOI: 10.1080/14746689.2023.2271273

'Significance of Narrating Island-ness: Andaman and Nicobar Islands in Contemporary Indian Writing',  Sambhasan, Vol. 3, Issue 4, (October - December 2022), 25-40. https://mu.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/25-40-Significance-of-Narrating-Island-ness_Andaman-and-Nicobar-Islands-inContemporary-Indian-Writing.pdf

'Ṣadā: Her-story and ‘Echoes of Nationhood’', Writing Initiatives, Serendipityarts.org (06 October 2022). https://serendipityarts.org/writing_initiatives/sounds-nationhood. (Commissioned Feature/Serendipity Writing Grants) 

'From Ayyar to the Detective/Secret Agent Who Loved Chewing Gum: Ibn-e-Safi's Fiction in Mid-twentieth Century South Asia' in Shraddha A Singh ed. Speculation and Detection: Explorations in Genre Fiction (Worldview Publications, 2022), 109-125. 

Looking back at Bapu: Gandhi and Children's Picture Books in Contemporary India',  in Satishchandra Kumar, Kanchana Mahadevan, Meher Bhoot and Rajesh Kharat eds. Gandhi Then and Now:  Autobiographies and Conversations (Speaking Tiger Books, 2022), 128-148

‘Situating the Tawaíf as a Poet: Nostalgia, Urdu Literary Cultures and Vernacular Modernity’ in Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen eds. The Bollywood Islamicate: Idioms, Histories and Imaginaries (Intellect Books, Orient Blackswan, 2022), 106-131.

‘Locating Romance and Women Writers in Urdu Literature: Hijab Imtiaz Ali’s Genre Fiction’, in Haris Qadeer, Yasser Arafath eds. Sultana’s Sisters: Gender, Genres, and Genealogy in South Asian Muslim Women’s Fiction (Routledge, 2021),  47-64.  https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003002062

‘Tracing Terror and the Uncanny in the Gothic Urdu Fiction of Hijab Imtiaz Ali’ in Katarzyna Ancuta and Deimantas Valančiūnas eds. South Asian Gothic: Haunted Cultures, Histories and Media (University of Wales Press 2021), 81-96. 

‘Tawa’if as Poet and Patron: Rethinking Women’s Self Representation’ in Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley eds. Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance and Autobiography in South Asia (Duke University Press, 2015), 141-164.

 ‘Frames of Cinematic History: The Tawa’if in Umrao Jan and Pakeezah’ in Manju Jain ed. Narratives of Indian Cinema (Primus Books, 2009), 167-192.

‘Eurasian Women as Tawa’if Singers and Recording Artists: Entertainment and Identity-making in Colonial India’ in African and Asian Studies 8.3, (2009), 268-287. https://doi.org/10.1163/156921009X458118

'From Delhi to London’, Londoc (University of London Magazine for Postgraduates) Summer Term 2006.