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Durba Mitra

@durba.bsky.social
1.9K followers 572 following 439 posts

Author of Indian Sex Life (Princeton University Press, 2020) & The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism (Princeton University Press, 2026). writing gender history in the time of gender ideology.

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Reposted by Durba Mitra
Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Here’s Chris Rufo and his podcast co-host addressing “the Indian question,” a reference to “the Jewish question.” That question was whether Jews could be incorporated into European society, and the Nazis were the ones who claimed to have developed the “final solution” to that “problem.”
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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
D.A. now: Jane's initial statement didn't say she was drugged and hadn't consented. But the D.A. never took her statement! All they had was what a campus cop wrote down. Her lawyer says sexual assault survivors must be interviewed by specially trained people. D.A. sh*tcanned it w/o investigating.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
remember that one time when the Cornell University President hit students with his car and then pretended not to have done it then justified it just sayin
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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
A Senegalese college basketball player, Amina Seck, is currently in ICE detention. Seck was travelling with her team to a tournament in New York when she was detained by ICE at Louisville Airport. She has been moved four times since her detention. #wnba eu.courier-journal.com/story/news/l...
eu.courier-journal.com
KSU women's basketball player detained by ICE at Louisville airport | Exclusive
Aminata Seck, 26, was detained while traveling as part of Kentucky State University's women's basketball team.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
remember that one time when the Cornell University President hit students with his car and then pretended not to have done it then justified it just sayin
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 27/09/2026
New York City is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement and has long been a refuge for those seeking community, dignity, and a place to call home.
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sepoy @sepoy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This organization is in this state because foundations and funders have "pivoted" to AI or to "anti-DEI" work. Millions of hours, thousands of weeks, thirty plus years of beautiful creativity and knowledge now sits in boxes in a storage unit. via "PhD level expertise in our phone"
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sepoy @sepoy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Spent yesterday packing up a beloved and vitally important cultural organizations' library and archive and the precarity of knowledge and knowledge collectors in this world where a mime machine supposedly knows all knowledge is insane.
gothamist.com
A massive MTA archive ended up in a Virginia warehouse. A Brooklyn man brought it home.
The collection of documents comes from a subway obsessive.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Most people have no idea how much international students are the lifeblood of higher education. But they’re about to learn. Sigh.
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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 24/09/2026
“On Tuesday, department chair Danielle Clealand told faculty in the Social and Cultural Analysis Department that the provost’s office rejected all women’s and gender studies courses from counting toward UT’s core, according to an email reviewed by the Statesman.”
statesman.com
UT cuts all women and gender classes from core curriculum, drops race classes
The provost’s office also eliminated dozens of courses on race from counting toward the core curriculum.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
They’ve almost achieved the dream of Black capital without any actual Black people.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
also i have the privilege of supporting the work of SEWA_AIFW www.sewa-aifw.org, founded for survivors of domestic violence, which alongside many orgs in MN, has supported families including Afghan refugees and delivered essential goods to communities affected by the violent Metro Surge operations
sewa-aifw.org
South Asian | SEWA-AIFW | Minneapolis
This is the homepage for SEWA-AIFW, a South Asian nonprofit based in Minneapolis, MN.
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sepoy @sepoy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
And what a Hall of Fame cohort it is with @veenadubal.bsky.social!
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sepoy @sepoy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Congratulations to @durba.bsky.social for being named a 2026 @caseygrants.bsky.social Freedom Scholar!🔥🥇🦅
caseygrants.org
Marguerite Casey Foundation | Freedom Scholars
The Freedom Scholars awards were created in 2020 to demonstrate the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s commitment to academic research and scholarship focused on shifting the balance of power in society to...
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Journal of the History of Ideas @jhideas.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
For Part II of our retrospective on "Specters of Mother India," we present an interview with Mrinalini Sinha. In the late 1920s, Indian feminists found a brief opening for collective political agency as women. Why did this opening emerge—and then get foreclosed? @dukepress.bsky.social
web.sas.upenn.edu
Universal Rights and the Specters of Indian Feminism, Part II: An Interview with Mrinalini Sinha
In the late 1920s, Indian feminists found a brief opening for collective political agency as women. Why did this opening emerge—and then get foreclosed?...
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Brad Simpson @bradleyrsimpson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Kristin Oberiano’s landmark history of Guam and American Empire is out today. Essential reading for @shafrhistorians.bsky.social and other scholars of the Pacific world. uncpress.org/978146969391...
uncpress.org
Territorial Discontent
This one-hundred-year history of the island of Guåhan, also known as Guam, charts how Indigenous CHamorus and Filipino migrants navigated and negotiated t...
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sepoy @sepoy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
One thing does unite all of these post-colonial cities: the past is being actively destroyed,” Asif said. “The task of the historian is to not imagine every beginning as new and to say these erasures are part of a process,” he added.
thehoya.com
Historian Seeks to Reclaim Memory of Ancient Pakistani City in New Book
A South Asia expert reaffirmed the need for continued study of post-colonial histories through physical and oral history in a new book.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
UT Austin has barred students from studying WGS, even as it holds the archives of extraordinary feminists like Lugones. Harvard has demolished WGS, with essentially no experts left who can teach its vast feminist archives, from suffrage to Angela Davis and June Jordan at the Schlesinger Library 😞
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Public universities have led the way in creating popular ethnic & gender studies programs, which are now being destroyed by aggressively regressive politicians & administrators, not because students aren't interested in these subjects, but because they are. www.texastribune.org/2026/09/17/u...
texastribune.org
Majors related to race, gender cut at University of Texas
The University of Texas at Austin rejected a department’s plan to keep the majors, a decision that came without public knowledge, an interim department chair told faculty.
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Texas Conference of the AAUP @texasaaup.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
“The elimination of the majors comes as Texas universities succumb to political pressure from Republican leaders who want to restrict how public K-12 schools and colleges teach race, gender and sexuality.” 💯 www.texastribune.org/2026/09/17/u...
texastribune.org
Majors related to race, gender cut at University of Texas
The University of Texas at Austin rejected a department’s plan to keep the majors, a decision that came without public knowledge, an interim department chair told faculty.
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Erin L. Thompson @artcrimeprof.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In 1965, an American scholar bought her first stolen god from two boys outside a Kathmandu temple. Grains of rice were still stuck to it — offerings from worshippers. She paid less than $2 and wrote in her diary: "I don't think the temple will miss it at all." 🧵 www.himalmag.com/mary-slusser...
himalmag.com
Mary Slusser’s secret loot of Nepal’s sacred art and heritage
A US scholar made her name as an expert on Nepal’s cultural heritage – while illicitly buying sacred artefacts and smuggling them out to the United States
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Tej Nagaraja @tejnagaraja.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
📣 NYC people — I have an event on September 24 at NYU. I'm on booktour for my new book, TROOP MOVEMENTS. On Sep 24 (a Thursday) at 6pm at NYU — I'll speak in conversation with Adrian De Leon and Ruth Milkman. RSVP today — and come through on Sep24! ipk.nyu.edu/events/book-...
ipk.nyu.edu
Book Talk | Tejasvi Nagaraja | Troop Movements: Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America’s World War II – Institute for Public Knowledge
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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Some 87,000 students have suffered a near total disruption of their studies for the duration of the genocide in Gaza, and more than 1,200 have been killed. Upwards of 200 academic staff have perished, many in targeted attacks. A new archive remembers them. www.publicbooks.org/remember-the...
publicbooks.org
Remember Them: Palestine Scholars Murdered in the Gaza Genocide - Public Books
“In Palestine, some 87,000 students have suffered a near total disruption of their studies for the duration of the genocide, and more than 1200 have been killed. Upwards of 200 academic staff have…
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Kaneesha Parsard @kaneeshaparsard.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Hi everyone! My first book Desiring Freedom is coming out this November on the University of Chicago Press. Pre-order here (bit.ly/4j51OqD) and check out blurbs from David Scott and Faith Smith below:
bit.ly
Desiring Freedom
A groundbreaking account of concepts of freedom in West Indian literature and visual culture.Desiring Freedom examines post-emancipation West Indian literature and visual culture to ask how they reima...
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Hakan Sandal-Wilson @hsw.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
+ “According to the latest information obtained from the field, nearly 50 LGBTI+ rights defenders, association executives and founders, members, former association executives and independent activists were detained or were subject to statement-taking or detention procedures.”
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Hakan Sandal-Wilson @hsw.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
“Simultaneous operations targeting the LGBTI+ movement: Digital blackout, home raids, searches of associations, and workplace raids” #Turkey kaosgl1.org/en/single-ne...
kaosgl1.org
INFORMATION: Simultaneous operations targeting the LGBTI+ movement
Simultaneous operations targeting the LGBTI+ movement: Digital blackout, home raids, searches of associations, and workplace raids
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WRMS Traffic & Weather Reporter on the 2’s @carnegro.blacksky.app · 13/09/2026
I missed FAMU honoring Dolly Parton at Miami Friday night.
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Ryan Thoreson @ryanthoreson.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
An aggressive crackdown against LGBTQ activism is underway in Turkey, where authorities raided organizations and arrested dozens of activists and supporters this morning.
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Autistic Science Person @autsciperson.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
How to find out if your CVS has the Novavax COVID vaccine: www.cvs.com/pharmacy/rx/... Put this in, along with your zip code: NUVAXOVID COVID-19 VACCINE/2026-27 INJ 2026-27
cvs.com
CVS Pharmacy - Check Inventory
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Aren Aizura @incommensurati.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
They already made it almost impossible to finish a PhD as an international student, and to come here on a work visa. Now this, a huge deterrent to institutional support of int. students finding US-based work after graduating. I guess white nationalism is worth economic collapse
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Mark Anthony Neal (@NewBlackMan on X) @markanthonyneal.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
'Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.' www.wired.com/story/one-of...
wired.com
One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’
Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I had the privilege of engaging her papers, open access to all in the Schlesinger Library. I cried in the reading room as I read her handwritten notes for the lecture when i saw her revisions. "We're Here" with "Here" scratched out. "We're Still Here." "And so, Let's get on with it."
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
June Jordan spoke at Barnard College in November of 2001, two months after 9/11, just six months before she died of cancer, in what I found to be the most profound words reflecting on 9/11: "what shall we do, we who did not die?"
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Since 9/11, I have found life in feminist anti-authoritarian, anti-military, anti-carceral thought. I write about it in my book, The Future That Was, from Women Living Under Muslim Laws who declared "vengeance is not justice" 10 days after 9/11 to the defiant mourning of June Jordan in November 2001
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Wazhmah Osman @wazhmah.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
As we remember the lives lost on 9/11 and the "forever" wars that followed, we also remember Razia Jan (RIP) and Patti Quigley, who lost her husband on 9/11. They dedicated themselves to building a brighter future for Afghan girls. Featured at #911Memorial
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Thousands of immigrants did the hard, dirty work of clearing rubble and toxic dust and debris from Ground Zero. Many were undocumented laborers sent to work every day with no special PPE, and got cancer as a result. Now some of those same people are living in fear of ICE. www.npr.org/2026/09/11/n...
npr.org
They cleaned up ground zero. Now many are hiding from ICE
After 9/11, thousands of rescue and cleanup crews went to work at ground zero. They were exposed to toxic debris and experienced psychological trauma. Today, many say they live in fear of deportation.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Since 9/11, I have found life in feminist anti-authoritarian, anti-military, anti-carceral thought. I write about it in my book, The Future That Was, from Women Living Under Muslim Laws who declared "vengeance is not justice" 10 days after 9/11 to the defiant mourning of June Jordan in November 2001
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 09/09/2026
NEW: Our analysis found that from 2020 to 2025, the rate of deaths involving ectopic pregnancies nearly doubled compared with the previous six-year period. The uptick was steeper in states with abortion bans.
propublica.org
Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths Have Nearly Doubled. It’s Worse in States With Abortion Bans.
With prompt and appropriate medical care, experts say, people shouldn’t die from an ectopic pregnancy. Women in Texas and Oklahoma have sued over delays in care, which, coupled with our new analysis, ...
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Immigration and Ethnic History Society @iehs.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
***Postdoc Opportunity*** Columbia University has authorized a search for a two-year post-doc position in Asian American history through its Ethnic Studies center. @karl-jacoby.bsky.social is chairing the committee and can answer any questions. More info: apply.interfolio.com/192621.
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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RNS @rns.org · 08/09/2026
OPINION: (RNS) — Since 9/11, violence in America has come from within. Hate crimes against Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Latinos, Black Americans and LGBTQ+ Americans are soaring. RNS CEO/Publisher Deborah Caldwell looks back on how we got here.
religionnews.com
I covered religion after the 9/11 attacks. I never imagined the hate would outlast the war.
(RNS) — Since 9/11, violence in America has come from within. Hate crimes against Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Latinos, Black Americans and LGBTQ+ Americans are soaring. RNS CEO/Publisher Deborah Caldwell looks back on how we got here.
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Karen Graubart @kbgraubart.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
We are so excited about this!
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
next monday, I will be speaking about my book, The Future That Was, at Notre Dame. Thanks to the Critical Empire Studies Working Group for the invitation.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I wrote about Robin Morgan’s gender & racially essentialist *Sisterhood is Global* vs the coalition sisterhood of bell hooks, & the complicated trajectories of radical feminists who went global after losing status for transphobia & racism in US feminist movements read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlant...
read.dukeupress.edu
Sisterhood Is X: On Feminist Solidarity Then and Now
In the 1970s and 1980s, sisterhood became a critical concept in the making of internationalist feminisms built on an infrastructure of women's movements, international organizations, and postcolonial ...
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professorvbrown.bsky.social @professorvbrown.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I regularly read @jamellebouie.net for his razor sharp political analysis, not for emotional impact. But this piece is devastating. It can’t have been easy to write, and I’m grateful to him for putting himself through it. RIP Pierre Damas… www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Pierre Damas Bel Should Not Be Dead (Gift Article)
Pierre Damas Bel should still be alive.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I wrote about Robin Morgan’s gender & racially essentialist *Sisterhood is Global* vs the coalition sisterhood of bell hooks, & the complicated trajectories of radical feminists who went global after losing status for transphobia & racism in US feminist movements read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlant...
read.dukeupress.edu
Sisterhood Is X: On Feminist Solidarity Then and Now
In the 1970s and 1980s, sisterhood became a critical concept in the making of internationalist feminisms built on an infrastructure of women's movements, international organizations, and postcolonial ...
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k’eguro @keguro.blacksky.app · 06/09/2026
Also, I think the anti-gender EO is one of the most globally significant. It was extended to foreign policy in January 2026. The same rhetoric appears in the (draft) African Charter on Family Values and the International Olympic Committee’s new (2025/6) sex verification rules.
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Ryan Thoreson @ryanthoreson.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Proud to have signed this letter as a WGS alum. WGS changed my life, giving me a community and opening opportunities that I wouldn’t have found otherwise, and it’s being dismantled at Harvard and elsewhere at a time it’s critically needed.
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Brad Simpson @bradleyrsimpson.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Too many Univs like Harvard, which should be training students to understand the world using gender analysis, so desperately needed in the current political climate, are instead actively depriving them of the skills they need and getting rid the programs and people who could teach them.
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jacrinck.bsky.social @jacrinck.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
As the headline says: the field has never mattered more.
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