Avrati Bhatnagar, Instructor

Please note: Avrati has left the "History" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

I am a historian of modern India and the British Empire, with an investment in women’s studies, visual studies, and digital humanities. My interdisciplinary research pushes the limits of the historical discipline by bringing together the study of the image and the textual archive to challenge existing scholarly understandings of colonial and post-colonial political culture. Prior to receiving my Ph.D. at Duke, I received post graduate degrees in Visual Studies and Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University and University of Delhi, respectively.

In Spring 2025, I am teaching a course titled "Modern and Global India" in the Department of History at Duke.

My current book project studies the significant role of Bombay women's anticolonial work and gender ideologies in promoting the spread of 'swadeshi' political consumerism among the urban middle class during the Civil Disobedience Movement in India.

Currently, I am also working on a collaborative public history project titled 'Words of Light on the Streets of Disobedience in Bombay' in collaboration with Sumathi Ramaswamy. Developed with New Delhi based Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, this project draws on a collection of documentary photographs compiled in a historical album named Collections of Photographs of Old Congress Party— K.L. Nursey. A video preview of this project is available here. As part of this project, I have published a co-authored peer reviewed journal article ‘Light Writing on the Lathi Raj, Bombay 1930-31’ in the History of Photography.

I have also contributed a chapter titled 'Interrogating 'Credible Chhattisgarh': Photography and the Construction of a New Indian State' to the edited book Photography in India: From Archives to Contemporary Practice (2020). This book is extensively used as a teaching resource in universities for photography studies in the UK and India.

In addition to academic publications, I have also produced public scholarship on a variety of topics related to photographic practice in India, from the Nineteenth Century to the present, through my contributions to ASAP Art, a platform featuring critical perspectives on lens-based practices from South Asia.

Learn more at www.avratibhatnagar.com.

Contact Info:

Office Location:
Email Address:
Web Page:	https://www.avratibhatnagar.com/

Teaching (Spring 2025):

• HISTORY 218.01, MODERN & GLOBAL INDIA Synopsis

  Social Sciences 119, TuTh 11:45 AM-01:00 PM

  (also cross-listed as AMES 357.01, ARTHIST 218.01, ICS 218.01)

Education:

Ph.D.

Duke University

2024

Keywords:

Cultural History • Gender History and Theory • Visual studies and visual culture