Zana Mody

Thesis title: Landscapes of the Body: Postcolonial Visions and Revisions of Mother India

Supervisor: Professor Pablo Mukherjee

My doctoral research investigates the evolving relationship between gender and nationalism in the cultural imaginaries of the postcolonial Indian nation. By revisiting how the female body becomes a metonym for the—as yet unrealised—Indian nation in the late nineteenth century (via the figure of 'Mother India') my project interrogates the persistence of this ideological figure as she multifariously resurfaces in the postcolonial Indian national imaginary. My charts a twin genealogy—literary and visual—from the inception of Mother India in the late colonial period, through the seismic and violent birth of the nation during the 1947 Partition, and culminates in twenty-first century India. In so doing, I expose how this figure has resurfaced in the postcolonial period, as a haunting spectre of the violence that continues to mark artistic representations of the female body.

My research interests include, but are not limited to: postcolonial studies; gender studies; art history; aesthetics; nationalist studies; world literatures; literary and visual cultures; the archive. My work–academic and creative–is invested in fostering interdisciplinary dialogues between world literatures and the visual arts. I am open to supervising undergraduates who are interested in any of the above.

Teaching:

During my time at Oxford, I have taught a range of undergraduate students at various colleges as well as visiting students via the Sarah Lawrence Program. I have designed syllabuses and structured modules for visiting students working on Partition Literature (India and Pakistan) and general introductory courses on Postcolonial and World Literatures.

I have experience teaching (seminars and tutorials) on Prelims Paper 1: Introduction to English Language and Literature and Prelims Paper 4: Literature in English 1910-present. I have also supervised undergraduate dissertations on the writings of Meena Kandasamy and Arundhati Roy, as well as work on Philippine Nationalist Literature and Irish Short Stories. In addition, I have taught as a Graduate Teaching Assistant on Paper 6: Black British Literature. 

I am a contributor to the South Asian Studies strand of the New Books Network podcast, where I regularly interview academics about their recent publications. Follow the link to listen to my episodes: https://newbooksnetwork.com/hosts/profile/57ff663c-10e4-4b01-8875-41f432....

Publications:

A piece of creative non-fiction writing, entitled 'The Highway Snake' was published in Ambient Receiver, Issue 3, December 2025, https://www.ambientreceiver.org/zana-mody.

Conferences:

‘Mothers of Hijras, Hijras as Mothers: (Re)imagining the Family in Postcolonial Indian Fiction and Film’, Postcolonial Narrations GAPS Conference (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies), held at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, September 2025.

‘Postcolonial Anarchitecture: Reading the Hijra in Contemporary Indian Anglophone Fiction’, Institute of World Literature, Harvard University, July 2025.

‘Queering Mother India: Reading the Hijra in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction’, Modern and Contemporary Graduate Forum, University of Oxford, March 2025.

‘Dual Ruptures: Bharat Mata and Partition’, Modern and Contemporary Graduate Forum, University of Oxford, June 2024.