Dr Anandi Rao

Anandi Rao is Lecturer in South Asian Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics.

Anandi received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Irvine following an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia and an undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to joining SOAS she was at NYU Shanghai.

Her research lies at the intersection of South Asian Studies, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial studies and translation studies. Her work looking at the documentary The World Before Her through a queer lens was published in Studies in South Asian Film and Media. She has also published an article on a 19th century woman who translated Shakespeare into Hindi, in the journal South Asian Review.

She is currently working on a number of projects. These include a journal article on Habib Tanvir's Hindi/Urdu/Chattisgarhi translation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a book chapter on a Tamil language production of Romeo and Juliet and a documentary based on the production. Additionally, she is working on a monograph that offers a metacritique of the term translation as it is configured in multiple languages including Hindi using translations of Shakespeare from the 19th and 20th centuries as her case studies.

South Asian literature and film, translation, postcolonial theory, gender and sexuality studies