Bio

Brown skin and the silver screen is how I started thinking about film. I was intrigued by representations of race, gender, and sexuality in cinema. While I first began my academic career thinking I would become an astronomer, fifteen years later I am an associate professor in the Department of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota.

My research interests now include Asian American, postcolonial, queer, and diasporic cultural studies. My book on the emergence and formation of a South Asian diasporic cinema in the United States, Canada, India, and the UK was published by Routledge Press in 2004. Beyond Bollywood analyzes the complex relationships between diaspora and nation in the current moment of globalization through contestations over gender and sexuality in South Asian diasporic public cultures. My second project focuses on the globalization of Indian cinema known as Bollywood. I look at the significance and function of popular Hindi cinema in national and diasporic identity formation, specifically as consumed by second generation Asian American youth.

Selected Publications

Desai, Jigna. Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Jigna Desai, Rajinder Dudrah, and Amit Rai. "Bollywood Audiences Editorial." Special Issue of South Asian Popular Culture. Rajinder Dudrah, Jigna Desai, and Amit Rai, eds. 3.2: (October 2005): 79-82

Bouchard, Danielle and Jigna Desai. "'There's Nothing More Debilitating Than Travel:' Locating US Empire in Todd Haynes' Safe." Quarterly Review of Film and Video. 22.4: (Oct.-Dec 2005): 359-370.

Desai, Jigna. "Planet Bollywood: Indian Cinema in Asian America." East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture. Shilpa Dave, LeiLani Nishime, and Tasha Oren, eds. New York: New York Univ. Press, 2005. 55-71.