Sharmila Lodhia is an Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Santa Clara University. She earned her J.D. from University of California College of the Law, San Francisco and her Ph.D. in Gender Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research examines constraints on legal advocacy and the failure of the law to address particular manifestations of gendered violence. Her work outside the law has explored issues of cultural appropriation, the social construction of gender, and feminist politics in contemporary retellings of the Indian epics circulating in animated film, comics, and graphic novels. Her interdisciplinary work has been published in Feminist Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, Violence Against Women, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Feminist Media Studies. She was the co-editor of New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights (Routledge in 2011).
- Gendered violence
- Transnational feminisms
- Postcolonial legal studies
- Gender and cultural representation
- WGST 50 Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
- WGST 101 Feminist Theory
- WGST 118/POLI 171 Gender and Law in the United States
- WGST 189 Sex, Law, and Social Justice: The Politics of Advocacy
- WGST 187/PHSC 187 Structural Racism: Race, Power and Resistance in the US
- WGST 190 Senior Capstone
“When Draupadi says #MeToo: Indian comics reimagining gender justice," Feminist Media Studies, Volume 21, Issue 5, 791-806 (2021).
“Beyond Rescue: Rethinking Advocacy and Intervention in the Women’s and Gender Studies Classroom, Feminist Teacher, Vol. 27, No.1, 1-23 (2016).
“Deconstructing Sita’s Blues: Questions of Mis/representation, Cultural Property and Feminist Critique in Nina Paley’s Ramayana,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, 371-408 (2015).
“From ‘living corpse’ to India’s Daughter: Exploring the social, political and legal landscape of the 2012 Delhi gang rape,” Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 50, pgs. 89–101 (May-June 2015).
“‘Stop Importing Weapons of Family Destruction!’ Cyberdiscourses, Patriarchal Anxieties and the Male Backlash Movement in India,” Violence Against Women, Vol. 20, Num. 8 (August 2014).