School of Liberal Arts (SoLA)

&ldquo;IIT Jodhpur is committed to impart quality education to facilitate the creation of qualified, competent and responsible human resources to meet the emerging technological challenges of the world. It is working towards creating an equitable learning platform that is positive, accessible and effective in the face of the modern societal and scientific advancements.

Flexibility in curriculum, in all its academic programs, encompassing elements of teaching, research, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship is the most unique feature of IIT Jodhpur. The Department of Science and Technology (DST), under the National Mission on Cyber Physical Systems, has identified IIT Jodhpur as a Technology &amp; Innovation Hub in the area of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. The institute has also been nominated as the coordinator for the Jodhpur City and Knowledge Cluster by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India.

The sprawling 852-acre IIT Jodhpur campus is a majestic tribute to the deep-rooted diverse cultural heritage of the region. The campus is an architectural masterpiece, which is slated to become an international exemplar of sustainability with net-zero energy, and advanced water and waste management strategies.&rdquo;

IIT Jodhpur

This paper explores the shifting and contemporary manifestations of menstrual taboos in central Kerala, India, particularly through the evocation of zoomorphic language and symbolism. It specifically focuses on a seemingly commonplace metaphor, pattiyayi (has become a dog), and argues that its connotative and cultural meanings have negative consequences for the construction of gender in Keralan society. The metaphor likens a menstruating woman to a dog. Further correlations between dogs and rabies patients culturally place the three categories – the domesticated carnivore, the person with a stigmatized illness, and the menstruating woman – as liminal entities, equivalent by association. Additionally, examining dog idioms (patti) in Kottayam that refer to the Dalit castes, the paper elucidates how idiomatic expressions evince societal juxtapositions of menstruating women with socially disparaged castes. These allegorical concurrences also draw attention to how the body and its organic activities and the propensity of certain bodies to incur permanent and internal pollution are at the root of symbolic denigration and gender and caste hierarchies. Furthermore, through the Foucauldian perspective on language, the paper links the dog metaphor to a micro theory of power by signifying the role of gendered power relations and the coalescence of discursive and material processes in historically shaping it.

Anthrozoös

When a Woman “Becomes a Dog”: Metaphors of Menstruation in Central Kerala, India

‘Lihāf’ by Ismat Chughtai is widely read as a tale of feminist and queer rebellion but it also narrates a complex account of a young girl’s initiation into sexuality as a result of her molestation by a much older woman. In this narratological study that also draws upon the historical context of the Urdu world of letters which framed Chughtai’s own self-fashioning as a writer and intellectual, I argue that the case for a feminist and queer-positive reading of ‘Lihāf’ often misses or downplays the sexual molestation of the narrator as a child and remains inattentive to the ways in which Chughtai constructs conflict and tension between the two voices that narrate the story: that of the adult narrator, a Muslim woman, who opens the tale and then, deploying the voice and perspective of a child, recalls and reconstructs the memory of the fateful events of her childhood. Central to my reading is the point of view of the child whose movement in and through the female-dominated zenānā re-presents the case for viewing ‘a women’s utopia’ in dystopic ways. By splitting the female perspective into two overlapping realms – those of the adult and the child – Chughtai rewrites desire as experienced by the ‘New Woman,’ a historical figure of feminist emancipation often identified in established literary and critical readings with Begum Jān. Such an identification, I argue, is, in fact, unidimensional and is trenchantly undermined in the story by the brutal and intersecting logic of patriarchal domination and class exploitation, a logic at whose fulcrum is the figure of the child as the dark Other of the New Woman.

South Asian History and Culture

‘No one heard me!’: sexual self-fashioning and the child in ‘Lihāf’

With the advancements in technologies, the need for Human's perspective and human-centered designs are in much demand and its essential to understand diverse cultural needs. The community in South Asia has been recognized to have a unique and diverse socio-cultural, political, infrastructural, and geographical background of the region. However, we continue to see that the studies presented to the CHI community about South Asia primarily focus on working with and unpacking the regional contextual constraints (of the users and the infrastructures), thus taking a developmental stance. We witness a lack of HCI work presented by South Asian research community promoting diverse methods, cultures and behaviors. We believe this is due to limited experience in the field and resources. In this online workshop, we take advanced steps to operationalize collaborations and resource sharing between HCI researchers by presenting their half-baked ideas, presenting published HCI work on other venues, or even sharing challenges faced in a Rejected HCI work in the context of South Asia. Our aim is to broaden the perspective of the CHI research and community towards the contributions from the region including and beyond development, by bringing together researchers, designers, and practitioners working or are interested in working within these regions on diverse topics. © 2023 Owner/Author.

World University root node

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Advancing HCI Research and Education within and across South Asia

Most studies of infidelity have looked into motivational factors, however, the process of how infidelity happens is not much researched. The present study investigates the process of infidelity as well as how individuals resolve it. Forty individuals (21 males and 19 females) with self-reported infidelity (Mage = 27.15) participated in the study. The study followed a narrative methodology, where the narratives of the cheating incidents were collected and analyzed. For the analysis, the transcripts were coded and grouped using Quirkos software. The results showed two different processes involved in infidelity- spontaneous and planned cheating. While spontaneous cheating happens in the spur of the moment, planned cheating is a well-thought action. The infidelity process mostly includes relationship dissatisfaction, entry of alternatives, triggers, bonding, disclosure/non-disclosure, post-infidelity reflection, consequences, and resolution, however, not necessary in the same order and all. In cases where the individuals engaged in spontaneous infidelity, the infidelity process started with the alternative entry and the trigger played a very important role. However, for infidelity instances where the individual had some time to think, it started with some risk factors, which may either be relationship dissatisfaction or the personal characteristics of the perpetrator. Participants faced negative self-conscious emotions like guilt, regret, and self-justification for their actions. Some unexpected and positive consequences of infidelity were also seen such as emotional independence and improved relationships. The study would provide guidance and act as a base for further work on the infidelity process. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Deviant Behavior

How do People Betray in Relationships? Understanding the Process of Infidelity in Dating Relationships

The study examines the differences in the decision-making process involved in selecting marriage and dating partners. A vignette experiment was conducted on 76 university students. Participants were given scenarios to choose a marriage or dating partner for their friends by using the positive and negative qualities/attributes of the given options. The result showed that individuals took more time and provided more explanation in the case of marriage than dating decisions. They remembered more positive attributes of their choice and more negative attributes of the rejected options in the marriage scenario. The results are discussed using the systems approach of decision-making. © 2023 American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal

Comparing the marriage and dating decisions of Indian youths: A vignette study

Object selection is essential to VR applications, but selecting small objects within arms' reach in dense virtual environments can be challenging. We introduce Tiny Hands, which allows reducing the size of the dominant virtual hand in immersive VR to navigate efficiently and accurately select the desired object. This study compares the tiny hands technique with ray casting and pinch-to-select techniques. Our results indicate that the tiny hands technique is significantly faster and more accurate than the other two techniques. It is also significantly easier to use and learn, perceived as natural, playful, and the most preferred technique. Participants appreciated its ability to resize virtual hands for selecting small objects and ease in navigating a dense VE. They also liked its similarity to mouse and cursor-based interactions and flexibility in adjusting hand size according to various object sizes. Participants perceived tiny hands as potentially fatigued for prolonged use and reported a sense of incorrect depth perception when hand sizes are too small. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Wow! I Have Tiny Hands: Design And Evaluation Of Adaptive Virtual Hands For Small Object Selection Within Arms Length In Dense Virtual Environment

Providing help to a help-seeker depends on various factors such as the cost of helping, the presence of bystanders, empathy, distress, and characteristics of help-seekers. The present research explores the interplay of various factors when help is asked alone or accompanied, and how that influences helping behavior. We argue that help-providers will experience more empathy and distress for single help-seekers than multiple. Hence, we hypothesize that helping would be higher when the help-seekers ask for help alone than being accompanied. Four studies were conducted to test the hypothesis. The first two studies were vignette-based experiments, which examined the chances of helping a single and an accompanied help-seeker in two different help contexts. Study 3 examined the hypothesis in a real-life help context through a field experiment. The results of the three studies supported our hypothesis. Study 4 explored the reasons for such differential helping patterns. The result showed that the different levels of empathy and distress for alone and accompanied help-seekers led to differential helping in these two cases. These results are discussed using the empathy-altruism model, the negative state relief hypothesis, and the cost of helping/not-helping. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Current Psychology

Does a single help-seeker receive more help? The effect of being alone or accompanied on the chance of receiving help

Rev. of Stories by T. Padmanabhan. Trans. and ed. by Sreedevi K. Nair and Laila Alex.

Himal Southasian

The Craft of Writing

Intensive use of the computer mouse is associated with an increased risk of musculoskeletal disorders. Due to prolonged use of the mouse with a wrist posture that deviated from its relaxed posture, users may experience fatigue, discomfort, and even pain on the wrist and hand. Both size and shape of the mouse can be a cause of this associated discomfort. In this work, we have followed a participatory-design approach to propose a design concept and develop a vertical pointing device prototype that offers a comfortable right-handed grip that resembles the relaxed hand posture. This work aims to understand user participation during the design process and how their involvement helped evolve the device concept that enables comfortable grip and novel interaction opportunities. We started the participatory design process using clay mockups to finalize the initial shape. After finalizing the initial shape, we made further modifications based on user feedback. After two iterations, we completed the design and conducted a user study to investigate perceived comfort and pressure on the wrist. We found that the grip on the device was comfortable for participants with medium and large hand sizes, and the majority of them reported no pressure on the wrist. The device allows users to keep their hands in a more ergonomically desired posture. It offers novel interaction modalities as an alternative to the button-based controls of a typical computer mouse. We believe this work will help interaction designers and researchers design ergonomic pointing devices enabling multimodal input interaction. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

Participatory Design of a Computer Mouse

This paper explores menstruation as a domain of kinship within and across three generations of women in central Kerala, India. Based on fieldwork, it shows that certain gendered practices of intimacy and care work in the context of menstruation produce kinship bonds among them, which the authors enunciate as ‘menstrual kinship.’ In the past, it was shared chiefly among consanguineal and affinal kinswomen and same-caste women, and became conspicuous only during public menarche rites and the separation of menstruating women. Presently, menstrual kinship extends to women outside the natal and marital family, often overturns the traditional perspectives of menstruation and actively contributes to maintaining the contemporary ‘invisibility’ of menstrual phenomena. The paper posits that regardless of its gendered nature and time-tethered transformations, ‘menstrual kinship’ has always existed as a realm that can release menstruation from conventional discourses of patriarchy and caste and aid in retrieving women’s phenomenological experiences and voices. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.