Photo of Kapadia, Ronak K.

Ronak K. Kapadia, PhD

Director of Interdepartmental Graduate Concentration and Associate Professor

Gender and Women's Studies

Pronouns: he/him/his

Contact

Building & Room:

1218 UH

Address:

601 S Morgan St.

Office Phone:

(312) 996-2715

Email:

ronak@uic.edu

About

Ronak K. Kapadia is an interdisciplinary scholar, writer, and curator whose research traces the entanglements of race, sexuality, war, aesthetics, and empire in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century United States. He is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and affiliated faculty in Art History, Global Asian Studies, and Museum and Exhibition Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Kapadia is the author of the award-winning Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke University Press, 2019), a groundbreaking study of the radical experiments, freedom dreams, and queer world-making potential of contemporary art and aesthetics in the ongoing context of US war and empire in the Greater Middle East. He is also lead project director and co-curator of the 2023 Veteran Art Triennial and co-editor of Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024). His current book project, Inspiration: The Art of the Brown Queer Commons, explores healing, justice, and pleasure in queer and trans-of-color aesthetics amid the slow collapse of US empire and ecological crisis.

Kapadia's scholarship bridges critical ethnic studies; decolonial and women-of-color feminisms; queer/trans-of-color critique; visual culture and performance studies; crip and environmental humanities; and critical studies of prisons, surveillance, and militarization. His writing appears in Surveillance & Society, Post45 Contemporaries, Feminist Formations, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, as well as in numerous art catalogs and edited volumes, including Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader and With Stones In Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire. Kapadia’s research and curatorial practice have been supported by prestigious national fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. He serves on the Advisory Boards of Verge: Studies in Global Asias and Surveillance & Society, and has held elected leadership positions in the American Studies Association and the Association for Asian American Studies. He previously co-convened the Newberry Library's Scholarly Seminar on Gender and Sexuality. Kapadia was recently honored with the UIC Scholar of the Year Award (Rising Star in the Humanities, Arts, Design & Architecture Division) and the Silver Circle Award for Teaching Excellence, recognizing his outstanding contributions to research, teaching, and mentorship.

 

Selected Books and Publications

 

Public Scholarship

 

Selected Awards, Fellowships, and Grants

UIC Award for Creative Activity (ACA) Program (2024, $25,000, PI)

UIC Scholar of the Year Award – Rising Scholar in Humanities, Arts, Design, and Architecture Division (2022-2023)

UIC Provost COVID-19 Relief Program Grant (2023-2024; award amount: $15,000, PI)

National Endowment for the Humanities Dialogues on the Experiences of War Grant (2022, $100,000, Shared-PI)

UIC Award for Creative Activity (ACA) Program (2022, $25,000, PI)

UIC Silver Circle Award for Teaching Excellence (2021-2022)

UIC Humanities Innovation Grant, Institute for the Humanities (2021, $10,000, Shared-PI)

UIC Teaching Recognition Program Award (2020-2021)

Mellon Humanities Without Walls Seed Grant on “Reciprocity & Redistribution” (2021, $5,000, Shared-PI)

Surveillance Studies Network Best Book Prize for Insurgent Aesthetics (2020)

New York University, Asian/Pacific/American (A/P/A) Institute, Visiting Scholar (2019-2020)

UIC LAS Dean's Award for Faculty Research in the Humanities (2017-2018, award amount: $2,000)

Mellon Art History Publishing Initiative Grant, Duke University Press, (2016, $8,000 for first book costs)

UIC Great Cities Institute (GCI) Faculty Scholarship (2015-2016)

UIC Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP) Faculty Fellowship (2015-2016)

University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship (2012-2013)

Consortium for Faculty Diversity (CFD) in Liberal Arts Colleges Dissertation Fellowship (2011-2012)

NYU College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award (2010)

Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Anita Affeldt Graduate Student Award (2009)

Stanford University Tom Ford Fellowship in Philanthropy (2005-2006)

Stanford University Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities (2005)

 

GWS Courses Taught

GWS 101: Gender in Everyday Life

GWS 204: Gender & Popular Culture

GWS 345: Queer Theory

GWS 390: Feminism and Social Change

GWS 407: Advanced Seminar in Queer and Trans Studies

GWS 455: Feminism & Justice: Abolition & Decolonization

GWS 494: Prisons, Policing, & American Warfare

GWS 494: Climate Feminisms & Radical Worldmaking

GWS 501: Feminist/Queer/Trans Theory

GWS 502: Feminist/Queer/Trans Knowledge Production (Methods)

GWS 594: Feminism, Abolition, & War

Education

PhD, American Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University (2012)
MA, American Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University (2008)
BA, with honors and distinction, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University (2005)