Madhavi Menon is Professor of English at Ashoka University. She earned her Bachelors and Masters in English from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
She completed her PhD from Tufts University. Prior to joining Ashoka as one of its first faculty members, she taught at Ithaca College and American University. She is the author of several books on queer theory, Shakespeare, and the history of desire. Her most recent book is Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India (2018), and her forthcoming book is titled The Law of Desire (2021). She is currently working on an edition of Shakespeare's Richard II for the forthcoming series of Cambridge Shakespeare Editions. This version of the play thinks through the Sufi provenance of ideas we commonly think of as Shakespearean.
Professor Menon’s research interests include queer theory, Shakespeare, and histories of desire. She works with questions of sexuality, desire, gender, politics, history, and identity. menon@ashoka.edu.in
After a very warm welcome by the anchor, Ms Madhavi Menon and Ms Anuja Deshpande acknowledge each other and Ms Deshpane asks Ms Menon about her thought process while she was writing her latest book ‘The Law of Desire’. Ms Menon talks about how she promised herself to not blame everything on the colonial masters of India but eventually ended up realising that the British played a crucial role in not only creating a divide among communities but also making desire a taboo. She goes on to talk about how rulers who invaded India before the British integrated into the Indian society openly which led to a mix in a culture that has more or less made the Indian food, architecture and many more aspects stand out. In her opinion, the case with desire was the same but a fractured society left behind by the British led to a vacuum now occupied by taboo. Ms Menon and Ms Deshpande talk about a few more aspects in regards to the topic as the session comes to a close.