Ojaswini Hooda Awarded Joint Section Annual Meeting Award

The Women’s Section and Independent Folklorists’ Section are happy to announce that Dr. Ojaswini Hooda (University of Delhi) is the winner of the $1,000 joint section annual meeting award prize for 2023.

Ojaswini is a lecturer in undergraduate English at Lakshimbai College, University of Delhi. She earned her Ph.D. in October 2022 after completing her dissertation entitled “Unravelling the Voices: Reading Women’s Folk Singing Tradition of Haryana,” which focused on the women’s singing tradition of the Jat community in Haryana, India. According to Ojaswini, women in rural Haryani are marginalized members of their communities and their cultural existence is poorly documented. She looks to rectify this and focuses her research and fieldwork on recording and transcribing women’s folk songs from different villages in Haryana, then transcribing them into English. 

The prize selection committee appreciated her commitment to better understanding the women of Haryani communities and shining a light on their unique ways of life. The committee was very excited her paper “Emotions and Affect in a Rite of Passage: A Study of Marriage Songs, Rites and Rituals in Haryanvi Culture” has been accepted for the 2023 AFS annual meeting and look forward to hearing more about what she’s learned.