Uma Maheswari Bhrugubanda is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) Hyderabad. She received a PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Columbia University. Her major research interests are Indian cinema, cultural history, feminist theory, gender studies, and translation. She is the author of Deities and Devotees: Cinema, Religion and Politics in South India (OUP, 2018). She translated and co-edited, Vegetarians Only: Stories of Telugu Muslims (Orient Blackswan, 2016). She has also translated some works of contemporary Telugu writers like Gogu Shyamala, Mohammed Khadeer Babu, Vinodini and Challapalli Swaroopa Rani.