Shreerekha Pillai, Ph.D.

Biography

Shreerekha Pillai is the associate dean for the College of Human Sciences and Humanities. She is also a professor of humanities. Her teaching ranges across disciplines in the humanities from literature and women's studies to cross-cultural studies. She has published as "Shreerekha Subramanian," "Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian" and most recently as "Shreerekha Pillai."

In 2008, she became the first recipient of the Marilyn Mieszkuc Professorship in Women's Studies at University of Houston-Clear Lake, and she published her monograph, "Women Writing Violence: The Novel and Radical Feminist Imaginaries," (SAGE 2013). She publishes articles on South Asian, African-American and Caribbean literature and media and she edited the anthology, "Home and the World: South Asia in Transition," (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006).

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Areas of Expertise

• Post-colonial studies
• Feminist studies
• Film studies
• Carceral studies

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Publications

Select Publications (Since 2016):

• Pillai, Shreerekha (2023), Ed. CARCERAL LIBERALISM: FEMINIST VOICES AGAINST STATE VIOLENCE. University of Illinois Press, Dissident Feminism Special Series, will be released in Summer 2023. 
• Subramanian, Shreerekha Pillai (2022) "Looking at the Nation through a Lover’s Eye: N. Padmakumar’s Film, A Billion Colour Story," Journal of International Women's Studies: Vol. 24: Iss. 2, Article 13. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol24/iss2/13. 
• Subramanian, Shreerekha Pillai. “Dismantling the Violence: Refocusing the Camera to BLM in South Asianist Humanities,” 4000-word article for special dossier on Black Lives Matter for South Asian Popular Culture, editors, Shoba Sharad Rajgopal and Priya Jha.  March 2021.
• Subramanian, Shreerekha Pillai. Review of Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan through its Women Singers (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2020), in Feminist Media Studies, Rutledge Press, Fall 2020. 
• Subramanian, Shreerekha. Invited to write and completed the ‘Foreword’ for student alum’s edited book, Gridlock: An Anthology of Prison Narratives (From Prison II Purpose, LLC), ed. Johnny Ward, MA, UHCL, self-published by Johnny Ward, Amazon Kindle, August 2020. Funds generated by book purchase goes toward the support of incarcerated men in Ward’s network who seek out Prison II Purpose, LLC. 
• Subramanian, Shreerekha Pillai. Review of Carol Jakobsen’s oeuvre in Films for the Feminist Classroom, Spring 2019 issue 9.1.
• Subramanian, Shreerekha Pillai. “Migrations into Servitude: From Kerala to Saudi in Kamal’s Malayalam Film, Gadhama” in the Projector Journal, Winter 2019, published as featured article on Jan. 1, 2019.
• Subramanian, Shreerekha Pillai. Chapter, “Feminist Masculinism: Imagined Response to Violence against Women in Pradeep Sarkar’s Hindi Film, Mardaani (2014)” published in New Feminisms in South Asian Social Media, Film, and Literature: Disrupting the Discourse. Sonora Jha and Alka Kurian, Eds., (New York: Routledge, 2017), 139-160. 
• Subramanian, Shreerekha. Chapter, “Who are We in the Novel?” published in anthology, Dissident Friendships: Feminism, Imperialism, and Transnational Solidarity. Elora Halim Chowdhury and Liz Philipose, Eds., (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 182-200. 
• Subramanian, Shreerekha. “Women Writers, India.” Pop Culture in Asia and Oceania: Entertainment and Society around the World. Jeremy Murray and Kathleen Nadeau, Eds., (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2016), 117-121. 

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Courses (Current Academic Year)

• Humanities 1301
• Humanities 3375: Ideas in Transition (topics include freedom, love, values, power)
• Humanities 5034 and 5036: Global Humanities
• HUMN 4326/HUMN 5236/WGST 4370: Studies in Film

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Awards and Accomplishments

• PRESIDENT’S UNIVERSITY FACULTY FELLOWSHIP, awarded on August 3, 2020, established by President “to recognize exemplary faculty for their substantial, outstanding, and continuing contributions to their profession in areas of teaching, research, and service.” 
• PRESIDENTS DISTINGUISHED TEACHING AWARD, awarded on April 10, 2019.
• PIPER AWARD NOMINEE FINALIST FOR EXCELLENCE IN commitment to teaching, scholarship, and service, 2018.
• FACULTY DEVELOPMENT LEAVE recipient, Fall 2021
• FACULTY RESEARCH SUPPORT FUND Recipient, 2020, 2011, 2010
• MARILYN MIESZKUC WOMEN’S STUDIES PROFESSORSHIP, First recipient of award set up as annual endowment at University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX; designed as financial support to complete monograph and generate women’s studies-related research, 2009.

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