This book is a part of the ongoing project by women to write themselves back into the historical and social canvas. The present collection of essays takes pride in being a part of this vital process of correcting gender imbalances in centuries old patriarchal structures. However, in many ways, these essays also go beyond the agenda of salvage or retrieval from patriarchal registers. Besides re-opening texts in which even female voices echo the males, the authors also explore the subjectivity of women through the mode of fiction, art, the media and oral traditions. While many of the recent publications under the genre of women’s studies have focused on women in a generic sense, the present collection is centred around the theme of images and self-images of Indian women. The former implies, by and large, male agency in the imaging of women while the latter signifies a subjective and self-reflexive exercise by women. It is hoped that these essays will provide feminists exploring fresh areas of research on women with methodological insights into how traditional as well as non-conventional sources could be used to deconstruct existing images of women and in doing so, re-present women in fresh and hitherto unperceived ways.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Vijaya Ramaswamy
Vijaya Ramaswamy is a Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Ramaswamy's first book, Textiles and Weavers in Medieval South India was published by the Oxford University Press in 1985 (the second revised edition has appeared in 2006 from OUP). From economic history, she has broadened her interests to cover such varied fields as South Indian folklore, religious studies and gender studies. Oxford University Press brought out her second book, Divinity and Deviance: Women in Virasaivism in 1996. In 1997, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla published her book, Walking Naked: Women, Society, Spirituality in South India. The book won the prestigious "Best Woman Historian" award from the Indian History Congress in 2001. In 2003, she published her first edited book, Re-searching Indian Women from Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Her other co-edited book, Biography as History: Indian Perspectives, will be published by Orient Longman shortly. Her book, the Historical Dictionary of the Tamils is in the press and is being brought out by the Scarecrow Press, Maryland. She is an alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies and was a Fulbright Fellow at Berkeley in California in 1988-89. Between 1992 and 1995, she researched on the spiritual history of women as a Fellow at the Indianj Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She was on an Indo-Canadian Fellowship at York University, Ontario in 1998. She got the prestigious UGC social scientist fellowship in 1999 and completed her book, Tamil Women from the Underside of History in 2002. She was elected the Sectional President for Medieval India in the 64th session of the Indian History Congress held at Mysore in 2003. She is currently engaged in the writing of two books - Crafts and Craftsmen in South Indian History and Tamil Myths and Legends.
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