Host City USA: Puducherry

Janani Mandayam Comar

Ms. Janani Comar is a PhD student at the University of Toronto in the Department of Religion. Her research is at the intersection of religion, caste, and performance. She is particularly interested in the way mythological narratives engage in ethical discourses. Her dissertation looks at hagiographies of mythic figures in colonial South India, and she traces the circulation of their narratives through print and performance. At University of Toronto, she holds the Connaught International Doctoral Scholarship and was a recipient of the MITACS Research Training Award in 2020. She has presented her research at several conferences, including the annual South Asia Conference held at University of Wisconsin Madison.

For the Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Comar aims to revisit the history of modern Hinduism to explore how religion and ethics are intimately linked to social status in the colonial period. Working with scholars at the French Institute of Pondicherry, she is focusing on the writings of subaltern Tamil-speaking communities and explore how these groups participated in lively ethical debates through performance. She is also accessing a wide range of archival sources, including from contemporary performers, to trace how narratives about virtuous figures circulated in rural and urban areas. Her findings will be an integral part of her doctoral dissertation on Tamil literature and performance.

Sumaita Hasan

Sumaita Hasan graduated summa cum laude as a valedictorian with honors from Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College, receiving a bachelor’s degree in media studies, English literature, and music. Her degree was supported by a four-year merit scholarship. Sumaita has had extensive experience in journalism, having served as editor-in-chief of the City University of New York’s platform, CUNYverse, in addition to being an editor for various publications.

Sumaita has also served as a volunteer vocal teacher for three years, as a volunteer English teacher for French and Bangladeshi women, and as a volunteer English mentor for a Ukrainian student. Her experience as a tutor for grade school, undergraduate, graduate, and for other professional students has reinforced her passion for teaching and writing. Sumaita is particularly interested in media literacy and cinema, and has dabbled in production, post-production, and website design. She strives to center South Asian and underrepresented voices in her work as a Bangladeshi second-generation American.

While in India, Sumaita hopes to create a journalism club that would produce a student-led publication, in addition to discussing the impact of all forms of media. She is also a trained vocalist and would love to organize a cappella group.

Courtney Fulcher

Courtney Fulcher graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York in 2021 where she majored in comparative literature. She worked as a classroom and administrative assistant at The Red Balloon Early Learning Center, a community preschool in West Harlem. She previously studied abroad, in India, through the NSLI-Y Hindi Academic Year Program 2016–2017 and in the fall of 2019 through the University of Wisconsin where she conducted an independent research project on alternative early childhood education in Varanasi. While in Varanasi, she studied traditional Banarasi pit-loom weaving under Salim Sahib, a weaver in Sonarpura, a weaving center in the city. Courtney is also an on-air host at WKCR-FM, a non-commercial radio station in New York City. Among other shows, she regularly programs for Raag aur Taal, a weekly showcase of classical Hindustani music.

Prior to Fulbright, she worked at a publicity agency as an audio business coordinator, working with companies in both the entertainment and audio industries.

David Monteserin Narayana

David Narayana is a PhD candidate in religious studies at Stanford University, working on South Asian religions and specializing in the history and practice of Śaivism. Born and raised in Spain, David began his undergraduate study of philosophy at the University of Oviedo (Spain, 2013) and he later received his BA in philosophy, summa cum laude, from the University of Massachusetts Boston (2017), completing two minors in both religious and South Asian studies. He then earned an MA in religion, with a concentration in Asian religions, from Yale Divinity School (2020).

David is a certified yoga instructor with teaching experience in Spain, India, and the U.S. He has also worked as a Spanish language teacher, interpreter, and translator. His interests lie in the fields of Indian and comparative philosophy, Sanskrit and Tamil literature, and yogic and tantric traditions (Hindu and Buddhist).

David’s Fulbright-Nehru project is telling the story of how a famous Hindu deity came to be worshiped in the form of empty space in a medieval South Indian temple. While the temple town of Chidambaram has been receiving considerable scholarly attention in the last decades, much of it has centered around the figure of Naṭarāja, the dancing Śiva. However, very little has been said about how Śiva came to be revered as space. David’s research is attempting to fill this gap by unearthing forgotten and unstudied texts in Sanskrit and Tamil that may provide a history for this belief and practice.