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 A
scholar and an activist
A brilliant student, a scholar with numerous academic
achievements, Susie Tharu topped at the Cambridge
A-level examination in Uganda and won the
Uganda Government's merit scholarship to receive
the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in 1965.
Her first book, The Sense of Performance in the
Post-Artaud Theatre (1984) was followed by
Women Writing in India - 600 BC along
with numerous research papers such as Problems
for a Contemporary Theory of Gender (1994), The
Body in Feminist Theory (1997) and The
Sexual Economies of Modern India (1998).
Also a recognised activist, she was a member of
Stree Shakti Sanghatana, a Hyderabad-based women
activists' organization. She was a founder member of
Anveshi (1985), a research centre for women's
studies and a member of Samata Sanghatana (1990)
that is concerned with issues of caste discrimination.
A woman with many a significant achievements to her
credit, Susie Tharu has acquired the fellowship
from the Noel Buxton Trust Fellowship, National
Council for Research on Women, New York, University
of Michigan and the University Grants
Commission (UGC) and also attained a Diploma
in Social and Public Administration from Somerville
College of Oxford University and a Ph.D
from the Central Institute of English.
From 1968 to 1970, she taught in the prestigious Indian
Institute of Technology at Delhi and at
Kanpur from 1970 to 1973.
In 1985 she undertook a major research project, Genealogies
of Gender in India, funded by the Indian Council
of Social Science Research, Delhi. With this, Susie
Tharu's field of interest began to get marked around
gender and cross-disciplinary studies. A pointer to
this are her books, Women in Telangana People's Struggle
(1988) and Women Writing in India - 600 BC to
the present (Vols I & II).
Apart from these, she also published numerous papers such
as Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender
(1994), The Body in Feminist Theory (1997) and
The Sexual Economies of Modern India (1998). She
is a trustee for the Centre for the Study of Culture
and Society and the India Foundation for
the Arts in Bangalore and the member of the Governing
Council of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New
Delhi. She also joined the Editorial Advisory
Panels of Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Indian Journal
of Women's Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia,
Africa and the Middle East (Duke University
of North Carolina), The International Journal of Post
Colonial Studies (Routledge, the UK) and Ariel
(A Review of International Literature) (University
of Calgary, Canada).
She has helped seven students in their Ph.D. research
and has taken on the responsibility of guiding six more.
She is also a member of Samata Sanghatana, (1990)
which is concerned with issues of caste discrimination.
An envoy of women and their issues, Susie Tharu feels
that her studies have given her a deeper understanding
of women and their problems. Her ambition is to be instrumental
in reducing life's miseries and she believes that nothing
gives her more pleasure than erasing a fellow being's
gloom.
A scholar by aptitude, Susie Tharu believes that at
heart, she would always like to be a solacing agent
for harrased beings.
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