Lisa Trivedi
Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of History
Lisa Trivedi, a cultural and social historian of modern South Asia, received her doctorate from the University of California at Davis. Her first monograph, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India (Indiana, 2007) was supported by a Fulbright Scholarship to India in 1996. She was a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Pembroke College, where she began research on her second monograph, Bound By Cloth: women textile workers in Bombay and Lancashire, 1890-1940.
Trivedi recently finished work on a project of 70 photographs of ordinary women at work in Ahmedabad, India, taken by Pranlal Patel, in 1937. She oversaw the first-time publication of the photos and curated their exhibition at Hamilton's Wellin Museum of Art.
Recent Courses Taught
Exploring Culture in Great Cities of Asia
The Making of Modern India, 1526-1947
Gandhi: His Life and Times
Colonial Encounters in Asia
Foundations Study India
Photo, Women & Labor
Selected Publications
- Refocusing the Lens: Pranlal K. Patel’s photographs of women at work in Ahmedabad. Wellin Museum of Art, 2014. Catalogue essay and interview with the author.
- “Gandhi and the Material Language of the Nation: swadeshi politics, 1920-1940,” forthcoming in D. Pathak (ed.) Rethinking Gandhi: A Communication Perspective, (forthcoming Sage).
- “Making Women (In)Visible?: the Nationalist Politics of Dress in India,” forthcoming in D. Fairchild Ruggles (ed.) Patronage and Production of Art and Architecture by Women in Modern India, (Routeledge, forthcoming).
- “Women in Modern India” in Sumit Ganguly and Neil Devotta, Understanding Contemporary India. (Rienner, 2010).
- Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India. Indiana University Press, 2007.
- “A Nationalist Public in the Colonial World: Swadeshi Goods and Official Space in Nationalist India,” in Dane Kennedy and Durba Ghosh (eds.) How Empire Matters: Imperial Structures and Globalization in the Era of British Imperialism. Longman Orient, 2006.
- “A Question of Trust: The League of Nations, India, and Mohandas Gandhi,” with Kevin Grant, in R. M. Douglas and M.D. Callahan (eds.) Imperialism on Trial: International Oversight of Colonial Rule in Comparative Perspective. Lexington Books, 2006.
- “Visually Mapping the ‘Nation’: Swadeshi Politics in Nationalist India, 1920-1930.” Journal of Asian Studies, (February 2003): 11-41.
College Service
- Academic Council, 2012-14
- Board member, New York Independent Colleges Consortium for Study in India, 2004-present
- Athletics Committee, spring 2012
- Common Reading Committee, spring and summer 2012
- Director, Asian Studies Program, 2008-11 and fall 2012
- Faculty Advisor, Phi Alpha Theta, Hamilton College Chapter, 2000-10 and fall 2012
- Executive Committee, Diversity and Social Justice Project, 2006-09
Professional Affiliations
American Historical Association
Association for Asian Studies
Appointed to the Faculty
2000Educational Background
Ph.D., University of California, Davis
M.A., University of Chicago
B.A., Hampshire College
