Publications and Podcasts
Shriya Patnaik and Sinjini Chatterjee, Co-Editors of “South Asia’s Courtesan, Hereditary, and Temple Performers: Expanding Discourse and Disrupting Histories,” Dance Chronicle Journal – Special Issue (2026, Routledge-Taylor & Francis, forthcoming).
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Shriya Patnaik, “Voicing the Last Maharis: Oral Testimonies and the Politics of Devadasi Sexual Regulation Projects in Colonial and Postcolonial India,” Dance Chronicle – Special Issue (2026, Taylor & Francis).
Shriya Patnaik, “The Last Maharis: A Historical Analysis of the Community’s Extinction,” Geneva Graduate Institute Research Office Research in Progress Series Podcast (2025):
Shriya Patnaik, “Mutating Modalities of Performative Culture and Social Regulation in Conceptualizing Histories of Tawaifs in Colonial and Postcolonial India,” Book Chapter in Anurima Banerji, Royona Mitra and Jasmine Johnson (eds), Oxford Handbook of Dance Praxis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025, forthcoming)
Shriya Patnaik, “The Colonial Policing of the Devadasi System: Deconstructing Exclusionary Prostitution Legislation and Women’s Sexual Regulation Projects in 19th and 20th Century British India,” Book Chapter in Guillaume Carnino, Alexandre Disser, Liliane Hilaire-Perez and Anaël Marrec (eds), National Historiographies of Techniques: At the Epistemological Core of Global History of Techniques (Paris: Presses des Mines, 2025).
Shriya Patnaik, “Tracing Historical Disruptions in the Sex Worker Rights Movement in Late Colonial and Postcolonial India through Testimonies from within the Community,” Book Chapter in Catherine Phipps (eds) Histories of Sex Work Around the World (New York: Routledge, 2024): pp. 188-213.
Shriya Patnaik, “Marginalizing the Matriarchal, Minority Subject: A Study of the Policing and Disenfranchisement of the Mahari-Devadasi of Orissa in Colonial India,” Book Chapter in R. Srinivasan (eds) Borders: Physical, Social and Cultural (New Delhi: HOW Academics, 2024): pp. 111-141. ISSN 978-93-95522-94-6.
Shriya Patnaik, “Exploring the Contested and Controversial Nature of the Sex Industry in India: Experiential Encounters by Sex-Workers from the Periphery,” Book Chapter in Abhiruchi Ojha and Pramod Jaiswal (eds) South Asian Women and International Relations (Singapore: Springer-Palgrave Macmillan, 2023): pp. 261-287.
Shriya Patnaik, “Sex-workers Defying Patriarchy and Challenging State Reform and Rehabilitation Projects in India: Voices from the Margins,” Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, Special Issue on Gender Activism in India, 7:1 (2023)
Shriya Patnaik, “Marginalizing the Matriarchal, Minority Subject: A Critical Analysis of Human Rights and Women’s Reform Projects in Colonial and Postcolonial India through the Case-Study of the ‘Mahari-Devadasi’,” Electronic Journal of Social and Strategic Studies, Special Issue (2021).
Shriya Patnaik, “The Invisible Voices of India’s Informal Sector Sex Workers,” LSE South Asia Centre Blog (2021):
Shriya Patnaik, “The Lost Life Stories of Mahari-Devadasis in Postcolonial India (1947-2015),” Borderlines (2021):
Shriya Patnaik, “The Missing Life Stories of India’s Sex Workers,” Graduate Institute Gender Centre (2020):
