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This essay examines how academic mobility and the reconstruction of feminine identity intersect in a few chosen works by Jhumpa Lahiri and Manju Kapur. The study uses a comparative approach to investigate how "intellect" challenges traditional gendered subjectivities as a tool for social climbing and a trigger for migration. Lahiri’s characters struggle with the exilic alienation of the intellectual diaspora in the West, whereas Kapur’s protagonists frequently face the conflict of the "educated woman" archetype within the constrictive domesticity of post-independence India. The narrative synthesis shows that education is a transgressive act that makes these women "homeless" even when they are at home, rather than just a pedagogical accomplishment. This study makes the case that educational migration results in a "displaced intellect"—a condition in which the female subject is torn between the emancipation of the mind and the cultural policing of the body.
Dadala Nagababu. “Displaced Intellects: Comparative Narratives of Educational Migration and Generated Subjectivity in Manju Kapur and Jhumpa Lahiri..” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 2, Apr. 2026, pp. 845–856. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n2.54.
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