To date, scholarship on gender and sexuality in India has been characterized by its participation in the global(izing) debate on transnational sexualities and/or its pan-Indian scope, according to which it claims validity for the entirety of the political and cultural body of India. While these larger perspectives of the pan-Indian and the transnational or global may be useful for a number of purposes (not least as a political strategy of bringing alternative lifestyles to the sphere of public debate and to generate solidarities), such macro-level approaches have tended to overlook or obscure regional specificities, differences and nuances. My research proposes to reverse the perspective and to examine queer narratives in India from the micro-level and the vernacular up, i.e. beginning with an examination of the particular case of one of India’s states: Kerala in South India. I argue that a study of specific regional details can ultimately contribute to a fuller and more nuanced perspective at the transregional South Asian level, which in turn will feed into wider discourses on global sexualities.

Nisha Kommattam is the inaugural postdoctoral fellow at the Leslie Center for the Humanities. Her research focuses on Gender and Sexuality in South Asia, as well as Modern South Indian Literature(s) and Cultural Studies. Current projects include an article on the pathologization of non-normative sexualities in Malayalam literature, several literary translations and a monograph on narratives of female same-sex desire in Southern India. She was trained at the University of Cologne, Germany and holds a PhD in Modern South Asian Studies as well as Master's degrees in English Literature and Philosophy. Prior to joining Dartmouth College, she taught in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.