Shailaja Paik

Dr. Shailaja Paik is the Charles P. Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests lie at the intersection of various fields such as Modern South Asia; Dalit studies; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; social and political movements; oral history; human rights, and humanitarianism. Her research interest and scholarship particularly focus on subaltern histories and gendering caste.

She is the author of two books, namely Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (Routledge, 2014 ) and The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford University Press, 2022). She is  currently working on her third monograph titled Becoming “Vulgar”: Caste Domination and Normative Sexuality in Modern India.

Her research articles on far-ranging themes such as Dalit and African American women, Dalit women’s education, new Dalit womanhood, and normative sexuality in colonial India have been published in esteemed journals across the world.

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