Sharmila Rudrappa
Phone: +1 512 232 6310
Email: rudrappa@austin.utexas.edu
Sharmila Rudrappa, a South-Asian-American Studies Scholar, is also a sociologist who specializes in gender and immigration issues. Her book, Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship (Rutgers University Press, 2004), is an ethnography of a shelter for battered South Asian American women, and a cultural organization in Chicago. The book contextualizes immigrant race politics within the larger cultural turn we see in the sphere of American politics in the late 20th century. A companion article, "Radical Caring In An Ethnic Shelter: South Asian American Women Workers At Apna Ghar, Chicago," was recently published in Gender and Society.
At present, Dr. Rudrappa is working on how globalization affects the social rights of citizenship. Her project is tentatively titled "Techno-Braceros, Indian Mothers and Other Such Phenomena: Conceiving Citizenship in 21st Century United States." She was in India during the summer 2003 conducting preliminary research for the project. She was a recipient of the Humanities Institute Fellowship for the fall 2003.