The present volume, Bridging Literature and Social Sciences, is an outcome of sustained intellectual dialogue and collaboration across disciplines. It embodies the conviction that literature and social sciences, though traditionally demarcated as distinct fields of inquiry, share profound intersections. Literature reflects lived realities, encodes social structures, voices silenced experiences, and critiques power dynamics, while the social sciences provide tools for analyzing these very processes. Together, they illuminate the complexities of the human condition and the multifaceted structures of our world. This edited book, therefore, aims not merely to juxtapose literary and social scientific perspectives, but to weave them into a larger fabric of interdisciplinary engagement. The collection of essays
demonstrates how critical theories, sociological analysis, feminist thought, ecological concerns, and technological transformations shape and are shaped by the literary imagination. The diversity of contributions—spanning gender and sexuality, caste and class, memory and trauma, translation and technology, ecology and dystopia—attests to the vitality of this conversation. Gender, Feminism, and Cultural Resistance A recurring strand in the volume is the interrogation of gender, feminism, and the politics of representation. Dr. Mamta Mahendru, in her essay Unveiling Desires and Rebellion: An InDepth Analysis of the Bollywood Movie “Lipstick Under My Burkha”, foregrounds the suppressed desires of women in a patriarchal society and the subtle forms of resistance embedded in their lives. By exploring the contrasting public and private selves of women, she demonstrates how cinema can serve as a powerful medium of feminist critique. This focus on desire and identity finds resonance in Dr. Jaswinder Kaur Aulakh’s chapter, T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion Through a Lacanian Lens: Exploring Desire and Lack, which shifts the discussion to psychoanalysis and modernist theatre. Eliot’s characters, caught between individual longings and social constraints, mirror the universal tension between personal fulfillment and societal obligation, reminding us of how psychological theories enrich literary criticism.