Rini Bhattacharya Mehta

Rini Bhattacharya Mehta is Associate Professor in the Program in Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with joint appointments in Religion and Gender and Women's Studies. She serves as Faculty Director of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Her research examines postcolonial cinema and literature, focusing on Indian popular film, partition narratives, and diasporic cultural expressions. Key interests include:

• Bollywood's role in nationalist discourse
• Trauma representation in partition cinema
• Postcolonial theory applications to media

Publications consistently explore intersections of cinema, history, and politics in South Asian contexts, employing interdisciplinary approaches to cultural analysis.