Meena Khandelwal is a professor of anthropology and gender, women’s and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa. Her research on Hindu renunciation is published in Women in Ochre Robes (SUNY Press 2004) and in the co-edited volume Women’s Renunciation in South Asia: Nuns, Yoginis, Saints, and Singers (Palgrave Macmillan 2006, Zubaan 2007). A serendipitous encounter with an engineering professor in 2011 sparked her curiosity about solar, biomass, and
modern gas cookstoves in southern Rajasthan. Several years of collaboration with engineers, archaeologists, and others has led her to reimagine the humble mud stove as a women’s technology. Her work on cookstoves is published in both co-authored and sole-authored essays, and in her recent monograph Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India (University of Arizona Press 2024).
This lecture, organized by Julia Kowalski, Associate Professor of Global Affairs and Liu Institute faculty fellow, is free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the South Asia Group at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, with support from the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, both part of the Keough School of Global Affairs.
New Policy for Spring 2026
In support of the Liu Institute’s growing commitment to sustainability, we will no longer offer food or beverages at most meetings, public lectures and events.
Originally published at asia.nd.edu.