Publications

Remembering Revolution (2012)

Remembering Revolution explores the gendered politics of leftwing cultures and practices of violence. It is a study of women’s role and involvement in the late 1960s radical left Naxalbari movement of West Bengal, the origin of India’s Maoist revolution. At a time when the face of international terrorism is increasingly female, this book raises new and pressing questions about women’s participation in cultures of violence through the memories of urban, middle-class women activists. One of the first major studies of the gender and sexual politics of Naxalbari, the book draws on a unique body of historiographic, popular and personal memoirs, and a wide range of interdisciplinary theoretical devices. In making central the issue of violence, the book offers fresh reflections on how women are implicated by and negotiate different types of violence. It forwards the first major examination of the ordinary, everyday interpersonal violence of revolutionary movements. Such forms of violence are not merely silenced in the collective memory of Naxalbari but also in women’s own search for heroic identity through militant action. Moving beyond current considerations of radical politics as a site of women’s agency or victimhood, the book points to the more ambivalent, psychosocial implications and costs of women’s political identifications and subjectivities.

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Reviewed in the following peer-reviewed journals: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Darkmatter, Feminist Review, Contributions to Indian Sociology, International Journal of Feminist Politics, SAMAJ, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, The Book Review, Economic and Political Weekly, Socio-Legal Review, and two major Kolkata-based dailies in English and Bengali respectively, The Statesman and Anand Bajar Patrika.

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Intimacy and Injury (2022)

Both India and South Africa have shared the infamy of being labelled the world's 'rape capitals', with high levels of everyday gender-based and sexual violence. At the same time, both boast long histories of resisting such violence and its location in wider cultures of patriarchy, settler colonialism and class and caste privilege.

Through the lens of the #MeToo moment, the book tracks histories of feminist organising in both countries, while also revealing how newer strategies extended or limited these struggles. Intimacy and injury is a timely mapping of a shifting political field around gender-based violence in the global south. In proposing comparative, interdisciplinary, ethnographically rich and analytically astute reflections on #MeToo, it provides new and potentially transformative directions to scholarly debates this book builds transnational feminist knowledge and solidarity in and across the global south.

The contributors have relied on intersectionality, transnationalism, inclusivity, and reflexivity in their exploration of the landscape of violence and violation in India and South Africa. - Ipshita Mitra, Feminism in India

New Subaltern Politics (2015)

This book presents a critical dialogue between the analytical templates developed through the Subaltern Studies project and new research on emergent forms of hegemony and resistance in contemporary India. Presenting a set of chapters that draw on research into fields as diverse as the lifeworlds of urban subalterns in globalizing Gujarat, the activism of sexual subalterns in Eastern India, discourses of merit in higher education institutions in Tamil Nadu, and struggles over land acquisition in rural West Bengal—to name but a few—to suggest possible ways in which to move towards new understandings of the agency that subaltern groups develop to negotiate and resist the workings of power from above in contemporary India. The book explores ongoing struggles against dispossession, disenfranchisement and stigma against the backdrop of a political economy that is being reshaped by neoliberalization. The volume investigates the contemporary relevance of Gramscian concepts such as hegemony, subalternity, and the integral state. Furthermore, the analyses presented in the book explore how imagination, faith and affect animate subaltern mobilization in India today. The chapters also interrogate how caste and class crisscross processes of mobilization in civil and political society.

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New South Asian Feminisms (2012)

South Asian feminism is in crisis. Under constant attack from right-wing nationalism and religious fundamentalism and co-opted by 'NGO-ization' and neoliberal state agendas, once autonomous and radical forms of feminist mobilization have been ideologically fragmented and replaced. It is time to rethink the feminist political agenda for the predicaments of the present.

This timely volume provides an original and unprecedented exploration of the current state of South Asian feminist politics. It will map the new sites and expressions of feminism in the region today, addressing issues like disability, Internet technologies, queer subjectivities and violence as everyday life across national boundaries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Written by young scholars from the region, this book addresses the generational divide of feminism in the region, effectively introducing a new 'wave' of South Asian feminists that resonates with feminist debates everywhere around the globe.

New South Asian Feminism has been translted to Turkish. The Turkish edition can be found here.

Journal Special Issues

De Araujo and S. Roy Special Journal Issue on ‘Intimate Archives’, African Studies (NB: Under review).
Nilsen, A and S. Roy (2016) Special Journal Issue on ‘Globalising Sociology’ in International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 29 (3)
Legg, S. and S. Roy (2013) Special Journal Issue on ‘Emergent Sexual Formations in Contemporary India’ in Interventions: International Journal for Postcolonial Studies, 15(4)
Muller, N. and S. Roy (2012) Special Issue: Feminist and Women's Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition, Journal of International Women's Studies, 13 (2)
Addison, M. and S. Roy (2011) Special Issue: Feminist & Women’s Studies Association Essay Competition, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 12(2)

Journal Articles

Roy, S. (2022) From Feminist Killjoy to Joyful Feminisms: Rural Women’s Pleasure-seeking in India. Cultural Politics, 18 (1): 12–27.
Roy, S. & D. DasGupta (2020) Aparajita and Nishith Chetana: the city’s contested fabric, Contemporary South Asia, 28:4, 434-445.
Roy, S. (2019) Precarity, aspiration and neoliberal development: women empowerment workers in West Bengal, Contributions to Indian Sociology 53, 3: 392–421.
Roy, S. (2018) #MeToo Is A Crucial Moment to Revisit the History of Indian Feminism, Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 53, Issue No. 42, 20 (online/open access).
Roy, S. (2017) ‘Enacting/disrupting the will to empower: feminist governance of “child marriage” in eastern India’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 42 (4), 867-891.
Roy, S. (2017) ‘The positive side of co-optation? Intersectionality: a conversation between Inderpal Grewal and Srila Roy, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 19(2), 254-262.
Trusson, D., Pilnick, A and Roy, S. (2016) ‘Living with a new normal: Women’s experiences of biographical disruption and liminality following treatment for early-stage breast cancer or DCIS’, Social Science and Medicine pp.?
Nilsen, A. and S. Roy (2016) ‘Globalizing Sociology: an Introduction’ Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 29(3): 225–232.
Roy, S. (2016) ‘Women’s Movements in the Global South: towards a scalar analysis’, Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 29, pages289–306.
Roy, S. (2015) ‘The Indian Women’s Movement: Within and Beyond NGOisation’, Journal of South Asian Development 10 (1): 96-117 (translated into French and republished here: https://www.cetri.be/Le-Mouvement-indien-des-femmes?lang=fr)
Roy, S. (2014) ‘New activist subjects: the changing feminist field of Kolkata, India’, Feminist Studies, 40 (3): 628-656.
Legg, S. and S. Roy (2013) ‘Neo-Liberalism, Post-Colonialism and Hetero- Sovereignties: Emergent Sexual Formations in Contemporary India’, Interventions: International Journal for Postcolonial Studies, 15(4): 461-473.
Roy, S. (2013) 'Feminist 'radicality' and 'moderation' in times of crisis and change' in Alexander Smith and John Holmwood (eds.) Sociologies of Moderation: problems of democracy, expertise and the media, Sociological Review monograph, 61: 100-118.
Roy, S. (2011) ‘Politics, Passion and Professionalisation in Contemporary Indian Feminism’ for the Journal of the British Sociological Association, Sociology, 45 (4): 587-602.
Roy, S. (2009) ‘Melancholic Politics and the Politics of Melancholia: The Indian Women’s Movement’ Feminist Theory10(3): 341-357.
Roy, S. (2009) ‘The ethical ambivalence of resistant violence: notes from postcolonial south Asia’. Feminist Review: Special Issue on 'Negotiating New Terrains: South Asian Feminisms', 91: 135-153.
Roy, S. (2008) ‘The grey zone: the “ordinary” violence of extraordinary times’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14 (2): 314-330.
Roy, S. (2007) ‘The everyday life of the revolution: gender, violence and memory’, South Asia Research, 27(2): 187-204 Roy, S. (2006) ‘Revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari’, special issue on ‘Sexual Moralities’, Feminist Review, 83 (1): 99-118

Book Chapters

Roy, S. (2021) ‘Transnational Feminism and the Politics of Scale: The 2012 Antirape Protests in Delhi’ in AshwiniTambe and Millie Thayer (eds.) Transnational Itineraries. Durham: Duke University Press. Pp. 71-85.
Roy, S. (2020) ‘Bricked in the walls of patriarchy’ in Jen Thorpe (ed). Living a Feminist Life, Kwela books. Pp. 231-4.
Ray, R and Roy, S. (2019) ‘Feminism and the politics of gender’, in Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Kenneth bo Nielsen, and Anand Vaidya (eds). Indian Democracy: Origins, Trajectories, Contestations, Pluto Press, pp. 151-169.
Roy, S. (2018) ‘Empowering women: the punitive paternalism of feminist governance’ in Laura Brace and Julia O’Connell Davidson (eds.) Slaveries Old and New: The Meaning of Freedom, London: Palgrave, pp. 281-304.
Roy, S. (2018) ‘Changing the Subject: from feminist governmentality to technologies of the (feminist) self' in South Asian Governmentalities edited by Stephen Legg and Deana Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 200-23.
Roy, S. (2016) ‘Women’s movements in the global south’, Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. 3 vols (print and online) edited by Sangeeta Ray and Henry Schwarz, Wiley-Blackwell.
Roy, S. (2015) ‘Affective politics and the sexual subaltern: lesbian activism in eastern India’ in A. Nilsen and S. Roy (eds.) New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 149-73.
Nilsen, A. and S. Roy (2015) ‘Introduction: Reconceptualizing Subaltern Politics in Contemporary India’ in A. Nilsen and S. Roy (eds.) New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. pp. 1-27.
Roy, S. (2014) ‘New Subalterns? Feminist activism in an era of neoliberal development’ in Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Anne Kristine Waldrop (eds.) Transforming Gender in India: Anthropological Perspectives, Anthem Press, pp. 175-88.
Roy, S. (2013) ‘Of Testimony: the pain of speaking and the speaking of pain’ for Adler, K. et. al. (ed.) Evidence and Testimony in Life Story Narratives, The Memory and Narrative series, Transaction, pp. 97-110.
Roy, S. (2010) ‘Wounds and ‘cures’ in South Asian gender and memory politics’ in Hundt, G., Bradby, H. (eds.) Living Through Intended and Unintended Suffering: War, Medicine and Gender. Ashgate, pp. 31-50.
Roy, S. (2009) ‘Testimonies of state terror: trauma and healing in Naxalbari’ in Parama Roy, Piya Chatterjee & Manali Desai (eds.) States of Trauma: Gender and Violence in South Asia, Delhi: Zubaan Books pp. 141-71.