Mithi听Mukherjee
- Professor
- MODERN INDIA
Professor Mukherjee specializes in the legal, political, and cultural history of modern India.听
Professor Mukherjee teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on global and transnational history and the history of South Asia with a focus on modern India. Some of the courses she offers include: 鈥淎 Global History of Nonviolence鈥, "Women in Modern India," and "Human Rights: Historical Perspectives."听
Professor Mukherjee received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is a legal, political, intellectual, and cultural historian of modern India and the British Empire. She has worked extensively on the history of law and anticolonial resistance movements in colonial India, and the legacy of the British Empire in the making of the postcolonial Indian polity. Her first book,听听(Oxford University Press, 2010) explored the role of the category of 鈥渏ustice as equity鈥 and imperial judicial institutions and practices in the making of the British Empire, the Indian anti-colonial movement, and the Indian Constitution.
Professor Mukherjee鈥檚 second book (University of California Press in 2026), that won the Kayden Book Award in 2025, offers a new global perspective on modern Indian history. Departing from nation-state centric perspectives on the Indian freedom movement, this book identifies the rise of Asianism in the early twentieth century as the primary driving force behind anticolonial resistance movements-both nonviolent and violent-that brought down the British Empire. Asia emerges in this retelling not as an inert geographical category, but as a singular agent of change in modern world history. A second edition of was published by HarperCollins India in September 2026.
In addition to her books, Professor Mukherjee has published articles in leading journals such as the American Historical Review and Law and History Review. Her publications include 听(AHR, April 2010);听 (South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, September 2025);听听(Law, Culture and the Humanities, October 2020) and (Law and History Review,听Fall 2005).
Professor Mukherjee has received both external fellowships such as the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and internal fellowships such as the College Scholar Award, the Center for Humanities and Arts Faculty Fellowship and the Kayden Research award.
Professor Mukherjee is accepting M.A. and Ph.D. students.