A Hunter College professor’s study on gender, caste, and violence in India made a “best books” list.
Rupal Oza’s book, Semiotics of Rape: Sexual Subjectivity and Violation in Rural India (Duke University Press, 2023) was named one of the best books by women in 2024 by the Hindustan Times — a leading Indian daily.
The book describes how rape in rural northwest India functions not only as a violation of women’s bodies but as a “language” to contest caste and gender hierarchies, control over land and labor, and notions of justice. “It is a much-needed reminder of how women assert their autonomy and refuse to be defined by violence,” the Hindustan Times said.
The honor is the second award for Oza’s book. Last month, it won the Political Geography Research Group Book Award.
The PolGRG said that that the book “points us toward new directions in terms of how to understand and approach sovereignty, autonomy, and sexual subjectivity as well as how to imagine justice beyond current legal systems and formal conceptions of justice.”
Oza is professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies, the Earth and Environmental Studies Program, and the Women and Gender Studies Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her work focuses on socio-political transformations in the global south; the geography of right-wing politics; and the conjuncture between gender, violence, and political economy.
