Area Studies Archives

Dr. Abhijeet Paul is lecturer in South and Southeast Asian studies at UC Berkeley and lecturer in ethnic studies in the Peralta Community College District. He is also affiliated faculty in the Contemporary Center on India, a research body at UC Berkeley. Dr. Paul teaches and researches South Asian, ethnic, and global studies, specializing in environmental justice and humanities, South Asian and Asian-American literatures and cultures, as well as environmental media. He is currently a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow affiliated with West Bengal State University researching the jute community, environmental justice, and globalization for a monograph to be completed in 2023–24. He has published several articles on: jute culture, ecology, and community; digital community and fakes; and biopolitics and seed sovereignty. He has made presentations in numerous conferences in India, the US, and Europe, and has been interviewed by the National Public Radio of Washington, D.C., and New Philosopher of Australia. He plans to premiere his film, Bhatti (The Kiln) in India in 2022. He has a PhD in South and Southeast Asian studies with a designated emphasis on critical theory from UC Berkeley and a PhD in English (American literature) from the University of Calcutta. His first Fulbright experience was as an Indian doctoral researcher in the US, and the second as a Fulbright-Nehru US scholar in India. He loves to travel and meet people.

Jute, Bengal’s “golden fiber”, is rooted in sustainability and well suited to local agroecologies; its cultivation has the potential for carbon sequestration and soil restoration, while jute products are environmentally friendly and compostable. Dr. Paul’s Fulbright-Hays project is exploring the local, cultural, and community aspects of jute’s reinvention as a green commodity in order to understand sustainability practices, climate change, and the challenges of adapting to new technologies. The project is examining the many roles of the jute plant in the oral and written cultural forms of India and South Asia. These self-representations by farmers and workers complement and complicate the scientific-technological narratives of agroecology, diversification, and global jute marketing.

Dr. Pamela Lothspeich is associate professor of South Asian studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she has been teaching since 2008. She is a literary scholar and cultural historian whose work intersects with epic studies, performance studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies. She has published extensively on modern iterations of Indian epics, particularly as they appear in Hindi literature, theatre, and film. Her previous research project was on the Radheshyam Ramayan and the theatre of Ramlila. Her books include Epic Nation: Reimagining the Mahabharata in the Age of Empire (OUP, 2009) and the co-edited volume, Mimetic Desires: Impersonation and Guising across South Asia (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022). She has also guest-edited the special issue, “The Field of Ramlila”, in the Asian Theatre Journal (Spring 2020).

Formerly, she taught at Michigan State University (2004–08) and Chicago University (2003– 04). She holds a PhD in South Asian studies and comparative literature from Columbia University (2003) and an MA in Asian languages and literature from the University of Washington (1996).

Dr. Lothspeich’s research project is on Raslila, an Indian performance genre spanning theatre, dance, music, and ritual, which enacts stories about the Hindu god Krishna and the goddess Radha. Many stories in the tradition emphasize Krishna’s youthful antics and loving interactions with his devotees. Raslila is related to other forms of devotional theatre, especially the Ramlila centered on the Hindu god Ram. This project aims to provide fresh insights into Raslila in all its material social, political, and aesthetic contexts, and also into its intertwined history with Ramlila.