Personal Statement: Thelma and Louise (1991), As Writer, Actor and Director, I Created A Space For Female Agency by

Personal Statement
As a second-generation Pakistani-Indian student with experiences of living in Pakistan, I

have practiced Burqa and Niqab, negotiated different spaces in the U.S. wearing the hijab, and later
navigated through the loss of my Muslim faith. Throughout the years, I found myself disillusioned
with notions of western equality and feminism. Despite my feeling a sense of autonomy in the U.S.,
I saw myself shifting between social spaces that in covert ways negate ethnic and female
subjectivities. I also observed the ways that ethnic subjects are gendered female. This made me
question how gender operates in creating perceptions of otherness and in the structuring of power in
the U.S. I sought to address these concerns in my interdisciplinary study of English, Psychology,
and Media and Culture Studies at the University of California, Riverside. In my undergraduate
studies, I interrogated the interrelations of race, class, and gender, and traced how they impacted the
bifurcated identity of those like myself who live on the hyphen. The critical knowledge I acquired at
UC Riverside as well as my experience as a religious, racialized, and gendered minority have well
prepared me to pursue a Ph.D. in Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. My
intellectual trajectory has been shaped by postcolonial and feminist theory upon which I draw to
investigate the politics of contemporary minority experiences in the U.S. I worked extensively with
film and new media while honing my skills of literary analysis. I have developed a multifaceted
approach to interrogating the structures and psychologies of oppression, which I would like to
expand on in my graduate work.
An important theorist who has influenced my research inquiries as well as my knowledge of
decolonizing methodologies and countering state violence is Frantz Fanon. Based on Fanons work,
I composed a research paper, A Fanonian Epistemology for Decolonization, that dismantled the
epistemologies of colonial ideology and explored anticolonial consciousness. My essay analyzed
both filmic and literary texts, Gillo Pontecorvos film, The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Jamaica
Kincaids book, A Small Place, and sought to study how the colonized subject may be imbued with
self-determinationan idea of central importance to liberation movements. Fanons exploration of
colonialism and psychoanalysis resonated with my courses in psychology, which dealt with the
neurochemical effects of stress and violence within the body. For me, the neurological
understanding of how violence disrupts brain development and the immune system and even
triggers premature illness and death illuminated Fanons critique of colonial violence as an
existential violence. At the same time, I found that while Fanons nationalist discourse and
anticolonial strategies adequately addressed aspects of colonial imperialism, they failed to address
patriarchal imperialism and, thus, perpetuated gendered oppression. Writing this essay moved my
attention to intersectional gender studies. It has been through this lens of analysis that I began to
challenge discourses that reinforce matrices of oppression in my own research and filmmaking.
Studying gender in media and culture, I produced original visual texts that demonstrated my
commitment to an intersectional mode of analysis. In a feminist reimagining of Ridley Scotts
Thelma and Louise (1991), as writer, actor and director, I created a space for female agency by
letting the female leads live on after usurping male authority, an ending that the Hollywood film
foreclosed. Using bell hooks theories of women of color feminism, I cast mixed-race Hispanic and
Pakistani women as the leads, a gesture that allowed for the interrogation of white feminist
subjectivity. In revising patriarchal narratives and deconstructing constructs of femininity, I exposed
the mechanics of masculinity, femininity, their dialectic relations, and constructed nature. In my
second film production, a rape-revenge horror film, I related my discussion of gender and ethnicity
to the nation. Employing the Japanese motif of the onryou, an avenging female spirit, and drawing
on Edward Saids critique of Orientalism, my film examined notions of Otherness and monstrosity.
Further, this film spoke to the gendered nature of social and state violence that links the body of the
female to the body politic. My final film project was a short documentary that looked at
independent news media, interviews, and blogs through the lens of critical race theory to unmask
the hypocrisy of mainstream liberal politics. Specifically, I critiqued the Human Rights
Personal Statement
Commission, for its lack of intersectionality when it comes to disenfranchised groups. For example,
I focused on the Commissions agenda of marriage equality that seeks to bring LGBTQ groups into
the fold of white-supremacist and gender normative structures. In exploring alternative media, I
learned how modes of disseminating news and entertainment are central to decolonization and
resisting hegemony.
The gendered nature of violence, masculinist nature of imperial ideology, and contested
trope of the nation were key concepts of my thesis, Rewriting Gendered Spaces within the Nation
which examined the novels, A Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai and No Telephone to Heaven by
Michelle Cliff. This paper analyzed how female postcolonial authors textually subverted malecentered narratives and nationalisms. In disputing patriarchal nationalism and the imperial ideology
of which it is emblematic, my discussion sought to recuperate the problematic gendered aspects of
national consciousness that Fanons scholarship brought to light. Analyzing postcolonial literature
in conjunction with critical theory was crucial in developing my interdisciplinary, intersectional
approach to the study of cultural production. I realized that abstract knowledge of psychology and
theory are inadequate for understanding the human pain of exploitation and abuse. This thesis is an
entry point for the ideas I hope to continue exploring in graduate school.
As a graduate student, my dissertation will implement a women of color analytic to
contribute to new theorizations about nationalism and feminism with regard to South Asian
subjectivities. I will analyze and critique the circulation of contemporary texts, media, and global
events such as the recent embrace of Malala Yousafzai (Nobel Prize co-recipient) for the ways they
propagate Western notions of liberalism and feminism and ultimately work to consolidate western
hegemony. I am interested in studying western representations as well as globalized imaginaries of
South Asian women in a post-9/11 context. By deconstructing neoliberal (mis)representations that
confine Third world subjects into essentialist and exotisized ideas of personhood, I seek to produce
counter-hegemonic work that maintains the cultural integrity and oft-elided humanity of
marginalized groups.
Among the faculty at UCLA with whom I would most like to work are Michelle Erai, Grace
Hong, Purnima Mankekar, and Sarah Haley. Dr. Erais work on discourses of postcolonial violence
bears directly on my interest in narratives like those of Malala Yousafzai. Dr. Hongs book, The
Ruptures of American Capital: Women of Color Feminism and the Culture of Immigrant Labor
dialogs with my thesis as it deals with globalization and the exoticization of the Other. I am
especially interested in Dr. Hongs intersectional feminist analysis and her discussion of different
modes of resistance in her book Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative
Racialization. My abiding interest in visual cultures, and their importance to my scholarship would
also be greatly enhanced by working with Dr. Mankekar, whose important book on mass media and
identity/nation formation dovetails with my focus on gender and nation. Finally, Dr. Haleys
historical focus on women and social movements will be indispensable in thinking through the
mobilization of social movements in my work. These esteemed scholars have greatly influenced my
decision to begin my graduate education at UCLA. Once I obtain my PhD, my goal is to continue to
conduct research, make films, and teach at a research institute.

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As a second-generation Pakistani-Indian student with experiences of living in Pakistan, I

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