Fields of Interest: Critical Theory, Hindi and Urdu prose, Literary Periodization, Architecture + Literature
Meher Gandhi is a PhD student who works on the modern Hindi novel. She is interested in genre politics and questions of form that define Hindi literary currents post 1950. Prior to joining the PhD program at UC Berkeley, Meher received her MA in Comparative Literature at University of California, Davis. Her MA thesis, “‘Skin deep modernity’: A Study of Hindi Nayi Kahani Authors as Deleuzian Writer-Physicians,” explores different Hindi writers' shared diagnosis of modernity and middle class in 1970.
Meher holds experience as the first research intern at the Centre for Memory Studies in Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Her work there drew on phenomenology, psychology, and literature. In 2024, she investigated this combination of fields further as a summer scholar in medical humanities at Stanford University. She fondly remembers her internship days at Penguin Random House India (editorial intern) and at a Delhi-based art gallery as instrumental in fathoming the dynamic nature of reader/viewer experience. Meher loves teaching and was a teaching assistant all through her MA. Hindi films, especially those from the 70s and 80s, and Urdu shayari keep her occupied at all other times.