Embodied violence : communalising women's sexuality in South Asia /Kumari Jayawardena; Malathi de Alwis

1. Abducted Women, the State and Questions of Honour: Three Perspectives on the Recovery Operation in Post-Partition India - Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin2. Rape and the Construction of Communal Identity - Kalpana Kannabiran3. Discursive Strategies and Exclusivities: Gender, Nationalism(s) and Cultural Identity - Shahnaz Rouse4. Inside the Andar Mahal: Muslim Women in the Private Sphere in Colonial Bengal - Sonia Nishat Amin5. Sexuality in the Field of Vision: The Discursive Clothing of the Sigiriya Frescoes - Malathi de Alwis6. Ethnicity and the Empowerment of Women: The Colonial Legacy - Jasodhara Bagchi7. Hindu Nationalist Women as Ideologues: The 'Sangh' the 'Samiti' and their Differential Concept of the Hindu Nation - Paola Bacchetta8. Static Signifiers? Metaphors of Woman in Contemporary Sri Lankan War Poetry - Neloufer de Mel9. The Myth of 'Patriots' and 'Traitors': Pandita Ramabai, Brahmanical Patriarchy, and Militant Hindu Nationalism - Uma Chakravarti10. Institutions, Beliefs, Ideologies: Widow-Immolation in Contemporary Rajasthan - Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid

Focusing on South Asia, this is an investigation into the myriad ways in which societies play out the struggle for cultural identity on women's bodies.