Our Bureau
Cincinnati, OH
Shailaja Paik, a distinguished historian and professor at the University of Cincinnati, is receiving this year’s MacArthur Fellowship. She is among 22 recipients. The prestigious award, often referred to as the “genius grant” includes $800,000 in no-strings-attached funding over five years.
Paik is an Assistant Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Affiliate Faculty at the University of Cincinnati, USA.
Paik was born into India’s Dalit community. She credits her parents for helping her (and her three sisters) defy the prejudices they faced as Dalits and as women, making sure they got an education.
She has documented the deep social inequity rising from India’s repressive caste system that she is a part of. Her focus is the plight of Dalit women like herself.
Her first book, Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India, Double Discrimination describes double discrimination — for being Dalits and because of their gender.
Her second book was The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality and Humanity in Modern India.
She said, “This fellowship is a celebration of the enormous contributions of Dalits — their ideas, actions, history and fight for human rights — as much as it is of me as a Dalit woman scholar. I am indebted to the Dalit women who shared their lives with me and I hope this achievement will strengthen the fight of both Dalits and non-Dalits against caste discrimination, in and beyond South Asia.”
