Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program
Field of Specialization:	Anthropology
Name:	Mr. Jordan Osserman
Official Address:	Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Indian Host Institution:	Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai, Maharashtra
Duration of Grant & Start Date :	Duration: 9 months August 2011

Brief Bio:

Mr. Jordan Osserman earned his B.A. in women's and gender studies, with a concentration in queer studies, from Dartmouth College in 2011. During his undergraduate career, he was involved in leftist political activism, helping found an organization for progressive organizing on campus and writing regular opinion columns for the student newspaper. Though he hails from South Florida, Mr. Osserman spent several months living in the nation's capital, interning for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force during the summer of 2008 and for the communications department of the White House during the fall of 2010. In the winter of 2011, he travelled to Hyderabad, India, to participate in a Dartmouth foreign study program and conduct research for his senior thesis, which has since morphed into his Fulbright project. Mr. Osserman has taken a special interest in cultural studies and psychoanalysis, and hopes to pursue academia in the future. Global capitalism and the international flow of images have profoundly impacted how people experience non-normative sexuality and gender identities across the world. This is particularly important in India, where the neoliberal reforms of the 1990's transformed the country into a locus of transnational communication. Through interview and close reading, this project investigates how queerness is imagined and policed under these new circumstances. Are we moving towards a global "convergence" of queer identities? What is lost in translation when queers communicate across borders? Mr. Osserman's Fulbright-Nehru research is titled as "Phobia/Pride and Power: Representation and Identity in the Auratic Space of Indian Queerness". This project is located in Mumbai the financial capital of India and hot-spot for the Indian "gay" identity.