Ashwini Tambe, Editorial Director

Ashwini Tambe is Director of WGSS and Professor of History and WGSS at George Washington University. Dr. Tambe is a scholar of transnational feminist theory and South Asian history who studies the relationship between law, gender, and sexuality. Much of her work focuses on how South Asian societies regulate sexual practices. Her 2009 book Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (University of Minnesota Press) traces how law-making and law-enforcement practices shaped the rise of the city's red light district. Her 2019 book Defining Girlhood in India: A Transnational Approach to Sexual Maturity Laws (University of Illinois Press) explores how the expectation of sexual innocence is distributed in uneven ways for girls across class and caste groups. Both books examine the direction and flow of transnational influences. Her volume Transnational Feminist Itineraries (Duke University Press 2021, co-edited with Millie Thayer) features essays by leading gender studies scholars confronting authoritarianism and religious and economic fundamentalism. Her articles appear in Women’s Studies Quarterly (2022), Feminist Formations (2021), American Historical Review (2020), and South Asia (2020), among others. In 2018, she received a Graduate Mentor of the Year award from the University of Maryland. Her research has received support from the Fulbright program, American Institute for India Studies, NEH, and SSHRC.