Esha Niyogi De’s research interests lie in film history, literary history, and gender politics in South Asian cultures. Her new monograph--Women’s Transborder Cinema: Authorship, Stardom, and Filmic Labor in South Asia (University of Illinois Press, 2024)—is a historical study of women’s collaborative practices and authorial claims across selected film industries of South Asia. The comparative focus is on Lahore, Pakistan; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Kolkata and Mumbai, India. Her first monograph--Empire, Media, and the Autonomous Woman: A Feminist Critique of Postcolonial Thought (Oxford University Press, 2011)--takes up debates in postcolonial theory in relation to sexual-political thought in West Bengali literary and visual productions. It examines writer Rabindranath Tagore’s gender-critical dance dramas and essays, choreographer Manjusri Chaki-Sircar’s feminist dance on video, and filmmaker Aparna Sen’s feminist cinema. Esha’s other publications include: articles in journals such as Third Text, Screen, diacritics, Asian Ethnology; two co-edited books, South Asian Filmscapes: Transregional Encounters (University of Washington Press, 2020) and Trans-Status Subjects: Gender in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia (Duke University Press); and many peer-reviewed book chapters in volumes such as the Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies and the Routledge Handbook of South Asian Cinemas. Her research has been supported by a fellowship from the Fulbright Senior Research Scholars Program as well as grants from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. Esha’s new book project is tentatively titled “Erotic or Angry Moves? Corporeal Politics and the Performer in South Asian Film Histories.” It studies the differing roles taken by the entertainer classes in the Lahore and the Bombay film industries, respectively, in relation to differences in the body politics of courtesan dances, dance-fights, and gender-bending male performances in Lahore Cinema and Bombay/Mumbai Cinema.