Transnational Studies Working Group

Exploring Transnational Studies Inaugural Conference

Held on April 24, 2009
Center for the Humanities at Tufts
48 Professors Row
9:00am – 6:30pm
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The Transnational Studies Workshop, an informal group of faculty formed to
explore transnational studies at Tufts, invites your participation in a
day-long conference on April 24. The conference is aimed to showcase the
diverse approaches to transnational scholarship across disciplines, as a
consensus has emerged within the group that pursuit of comparative and
connective research across cultural and regional boundaries also calls for
dialogue across disciplinary divides.

Keynote Speaker:
Smitha Radhakrishnan, Wellesley College
Producing Appropriate Difference: Gender, Caste, and the Question of Diversity in Indian High-Tech

Biography:
Smitha Radhakrishnan is an assistant professor of Sociology at Wellesley College. Her courses stem from her continued interests in the intersections between gender, class, nation, and political economy. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Aspiring India: Gender, Power and the Global Knowledge Economy. The book manuscript draws from her dissertation research on the new Indian middle class, which focused on information technology (IT) professionals working in Mumbai and Bangalore. Through a multi-sited ethnographic approach that also includes comparative pieces among the diaspora in the Silicon Valley and South Africa, she examines how gender and class shape a broader notion of India as an emerging nation. In her previous research, Professor Radhakrishnan has studied meanings of race, ethnicity, and femininity amongst South African Indians in Durban (South Africa), and has studied gender and development in Rajasthan and Kerala (India). Before coming to Wellesley, Professor Radhakrishnan was a Global Fellow at UCLA's International Institute. Her recent publications have appeared in Theory and Society and in the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

This event is sponsored by the Tufts Diversity Fund.