Paola Bacchetta

Title: 
Professor and Vice Chair for Research
Bio: 

Paola Bacchetta is Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at University of California, Berkeley. She is also Co-chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Project based at Center for Race and Gender at University of California, Berkeley. She is on the Executive Committee of the California-wide Center for New Racial Studies and previously served as Coordinator of the Gender Consortium at Berkeley. Bacchetta is the former Director (2006-2010) and current Advisory Board Chair of the Beatrice Bain Research Group at Berkeley. Bacchetta is an Advisory Board member of University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, and Center for Right-Wing Studies. Besides Gender and Women’s Studies, Bacchetta is a faculty member at University of California’s Center for South Asia Studies; Center for Middle Eastern Studies; Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures; and Graduate Group in Dance, Theater and Performance Studies.

Bacchetta’s scholarly interests include: political conflict; transnational feminist and queer theory; decolonial and postcolonial theory; queer of color theory; multiplicities (intersectionality, assemblages, articulational theorizations, co-formations and co-productions); epistemologies of the south; social and critical theory; and theories of spatialities. She has published on thematics such as: political and religious conflict; right-wing movements; liberation-oriented movements, insurgencies, and artistic expressions by feminist and queer of color, decolonial and postcolonial subjects and movements; and co-motion (alliances, coalitions, convergences, solidarities). Her methods of specialization are: discourse analysis, and ethnography and participant-observation. Her geographical areas of concentration are France, India, U.S., and more recently Italy.

Bacchetta holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from The Sorbonne in Paris, with highest honors. Bacchetta’s publications include: sole authored books: Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologues. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2004; La construction des identités dans les discours nationalistes hindous : le Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh et la Rashtra Sevika Samiti (1939-1992). [The Construction of Identities in Hindu Nationalist Discourse (1939-1992): The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Rashtra Sevika Samiti]. 2 vols. Micro-fiche. (dissertation) Lille, France: A.N.R.T, Université de Lille III, 1996; co-edited books: Trans-Q Fem: Elementi per una critica femminista queer e transnazionale. (Trans-Q Fem: Elements for a Queer Transnational Feminist Critique. Co-edited by Paola Bacchetta and Laura Fantone. Verona: Ombre Corte, 2015); Textes du Mouvement Lesbien en France, 1970-2000. (Texts from the French Lesbian Movement, 1970-2000). Co-editor with Claudie Lesselier. (Web anthology of primary texts of lesbian social movements in France 1970 to 2000), 2011. Accessible at: http://www.coordinationlesbienne.org/spip.php?article174Also: on CD at Archives Recherches Cultures Lesbiennes (ARCL), Maison des Femmes, 163 rue de Charenton, 75012 Paris, France.; Right-Wing Women: From Conservatives to Extremists around the World. Contributing co-editor with Margaret Power. New York: Routledge, 2002; co-contributed monograph: Conflicted Democracies and Gendered Violence: The Right to HealInternal Conflict and Social Upheaval in India (ACRes-CSSL, University of California, Berkeley, 2015; Zubaan, U. Chicago distribution, 2016); and co-edited journal issues: Théories Décoloniales Féministes et Queers: Interventions Ch/Xicanas et Latinas Etatsuniennes. Special issue co-edited with Jules Falquet and Norma Alarcón. Cahiers du CEDREF. (Summer), 2012; Gender-Sexuality-State-Nation: Transnational Feminist Analysis, special issue, co- edited with Jyoti Puri, and Hyun Sook Kim. Gender and Society 19 (April), 2005; and over forty academic articles and book chapters.

For more information please see: http://berkeley.academia.edu/PaolaBacchetta

Research interests: 
  • Transnational Feminist and Queer Theory
  • Decolonial Theory
  • Critical Theory
  • Movements, Activisms, Artivisms
  • France, India, U.S.
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