Dr. Kanika Batra in Residence August 2025

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Kanika Batra in residence with the Speculative Play and Just Futurities program August 2025.

During her Indianapolis residency, Dr. Batra will develop work towards Black Freedom from Selma to Soweto. Her book aims to outline how women’s leadership in student movements of the 1960s and 1970s influenced the course of racial and gender equality in the United States and South Africa.  

Although Selma and Soweto are the most famous markers of two globally inspirational struggles for racial equality in the last half of the twentieth century, the movements themselves are known largely through the lives and ideas of a few charismatic leaders. Charting multiple forms of leadership and influence, movement participants, historians, social scientists, and novelists has revised this focus on male leaders, exclusion of women’s roles, and the perception that South African student activists borrowed their ideas from those in the United States.

About Dr. Kanika Batra

Dr. Kanika Batra is Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty in Women’s Studies at Texas Tech University. She researches and teaches transnational feminist and queer studies, globalization, urbanization, postcolonial and comparative literature. She the author of Caribbean Poetry: Derek Walcott and Edward Brathwaite (2001), Feminist Visions and Queer Futures in Postcolonial Drama (2011), and Worlding Postcolonial Sexualities: Publics, Counterpublics, Human Rights (2022), winner of the 2020 National Women’s Studies Association award in Subversive Histories and Feminist Futures.   

Information about Kanika Batra’s artwork and creative research is available at kanikabatra.com.

Speculative Play and Just Futurities is made possible through the generous support of the Mellon Foundation. SPJF is a collaboration between the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, the Center for Africana Studies and Culture, and the Ray Bradbury Center. Learn more about the program here.