Melani Budianta | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Tan Tjiok Sien 16 May 1954 Malang, East Java |
| Nationality | Indonesian |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Studies on feminism, postcolonialism, and multiculturalism |
| Spouse | Eka Budianta |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Literature, feminism |
| Thesis | A Glimpse of Another World: Representations of Difference and 'Race': Stephen Crane and the American 1890s (1992) |
Melanita Pranaya Budianta (born 16 May 1954), born Tan Tjiok Sien and better known as Melani Budianta, is an Indonesian scholar of feminism, postcolonialism, and multiculturalism.
Born in Malang, East Java, Budianta learned a culture of reading from her family. She enroled at the University of Indonesia, marrying fellow student Eka Budianta in 1977 and receiving a degree in English literature two years later. On scholarships from the Fulbright Programme, she received her master's degree from the University of Southern California in 1981 and her doctoral degree from Cornell University in 1992. In 2006, she was made a full professor at the University of Indonesia, where she began teaching in the 1980s.
Budianta has written extensively on English and Indonesian literature, dealing with subjects such as popular literature, otherness, and hybridity. Initially an assimilationist, following the gender- and race-based violence that surrounded the fall of Soeharto she began to explore the questions of intersectionality. She has been active in women's and human rights movements.