Historian Shailaja Paik wins 2024 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her research on Dalit women
Paik will receive a grant of $800,000, paid in quarterly instalments over five years to each of the Fellows.
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Historian Shailaja Paik was awarded a 2024 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her scholarship on exploring the intersection of caste, gender, and sexuality through the lives of Dalit women in modern India. Through her work, Paik provides new insight into the history of caste domination and traces the ways in which gender and sexuality are used to deny Dalit women dignity and personhood. In addition to English, Marathi, and Hindi-language source materials, she is creating a new archive comprised of her interviews and fieldwork with contemporary Dalit women.
The Fellowship’s aim is to identify extraordinarily creative individuals with a track record of excellence in a field of scholarship or area of practice, who demonstrate the ability to impact society in significant and beneficial ways through their pioneering work or the rigor of their contributions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or individuals in other fields. Paik will receive $800,000, paid in quarterly instalments over five years.
Paik’s first book, Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (2014), details Dalit women’s struggles for education and agency in colonial and contemporary urban Maharashtra. Drawing on oral interviews with three generations of women, she shows that Dalit women were caught between two opposing forces.
Paik expands...
