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Jisha Menon
Robert G. Freeman Professor of International Studies, Director of Stanford Global Studies and Professor, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature
Ph.D., Stanford University, Drama (2004)
MA., Jawaharlal Nehru University, English (1996)
B.A., Bangalore University, English (1993)
Department:
Theater and Performance Studies
Jisha Menon is the Robert G. Freeman Professor of International Studies and Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in Comparative Literature. She is Chair of the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. Previously, she served as the Sakurako and William Fisher Family Director of Stanford Global Studies, Denning Faculty Director of the Stanford Arts Institute, and Faculty Director of the Center for South Asia.
Menon is a scholar of transnational performance studies whose work explores the intersections of aesthetics, politics, and ethics. Her scholarship takes performance as a generative analytical category for understanding how powerful political and cultural formations are inhabited, negotiated, and contested in everyday life. Her current book project, Law, Affect, and the Performance of Personhood (under contract with Cambridge University Press), explores how legal practices produce a particular liberal conception of the person and how this conception differs from more plural and discontinuous understandings of personhood. It argues that attending to the performed and fictive constitution of the person in law reveals the artifice -- and the aesthetics -- at the heart of jurisprudence.
Menon's books and edited volumes explore arts and aesthetics in relation to neoliberal capitalism, postcolonial nationalism, secularism, and geopolitical conflict. Her latest book, Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India (Northwestern UP, 2021) considers the city and the self as aesthetic projects that are renovated in the wake of neoliberal economic reforms in India. The study explores how discourses of beauty are mobilized toward anti-democratic ends. Sketching out scenes of urban aspiration and its dark underbelly, the book delineates the creative and destructive potential of India’s lurch into contemporary capitalism. Her first book, The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan and the Memory of Partition (Cambridge UP, 2013), examines the affective and performative dimensions of nation-making. The book recuperates the idea of "mimesis" to rethink political history and the crisis of its aesthetic representation, while examining the mimetic relationality that undergirds the encounter between India and Pakistan. She is also co-editor of two volumes: Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict (with Patrick Anderson) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Performing the Secular: Religion, Representation, and Politics (with Milija Gluhovic) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.)
Menon's university leadership has been recognized with Stanford’s inaugural Outstanding Leader Award from the Faculty Women’s Forum. She has served on the Stanford Faculty Senate as well as on the Steering Committee for the Faculty Senate. Her contributions to the field include leadership in Performance Studies International, as well as service on the editorial boards of leading journals and book series.
In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Menon is a director, actor, and playwright. Her co-authored play, City of Gardens, (with Abhishek Majumdar) was published by Dawran Press in 2026. Previously, she served as Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Menon is a scholar of transnational performance studies whose work explores the intersections of aesthetics, politics, and ethics. Her scholarship takes performance as a generative analytical category for understanding how powerful political and cultural formations are inhabited, negotiated, and contested in everyday life. Her current book project, Law, Affect, and the Performance of Personhood (under contract with Cambridge University Press), explores how legal practices produce a particular liberal conception of the person and how this conception differs from more plural and discontinuous understandings of personhood. It argues that attending to the performed and fictive constitution of the person in law reveals the artifice -- and the aesthetics -- at the heart of jurisprudence.
Menon's books and edited volumes explore arts and aesthetics in relation to neoliberal capitalism, postcolonial nationalism, secularism, and geopolitical conflict. Her latest book, Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India (Northwestern UP, 2021) considers the city and the self as aesthetic projects that are renovated in the wake of neoliberal economic reforms in India. The study explores how discourses of beauty are mobilized toward anti-democratic ends. Sketching out scenes of urban aspiration and its dark underbelly, the book delineates the creative and destructive potential of India’s lurch into contemporary capitalism. Her first book, The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan and the Memory of Partition (Cambridge UP, 2013), examines the affective and performative dimensions of nation-making. The book recuperates the idea of "mimesis" to rethink political history and the crisis of its aesthetic representation, while examining the mimetic relationality that undergirds the encounter between India and Pakistan. She is also co-editor of two volumes: Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict (with Patrick Anderson) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Performing the Secular: Religion, Representation, and Politics (with Milija Gluhovic) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.)
Menon's university leadership has been recognized with Stanford’s inaugural Outstanding Leader Award from the Faculty Women’s Forum. She has served on the Stanford Faculty Senate as well as on the Steering Committee for the Faculty Senate. Her contributions to the field include leadership in Performance Studies International, as well as service on the editorial boards of leading journals and book series.
In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Menon is a director, actor, and playwright. Her co-authored play, City of Gardens, (with Abhishek Majumdar) was published by Dawran Press in 2026. Previously, she served as Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.