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UC Davis experts: South Asia and the diasporaThe following UC Davis faculty members are available to speak on topics related to South Asians and the diaspora. If you need information on a topic not listed, please contact Claudia Morain at the UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9841, cmmorain@ucdavis.edu, or Julia Ann Easley, (530) 752-8248, jaeasley@ucdavis.edu. The diaspora
Economics, law and politics
Culture and religion
THE DIASPORAOutsourcing, changing nature of corporationsAs advances in technology enable services to be outsourced -- such as the preparation of U.S. tax returns in India -- Professor Anupam Chander of the School of Law is studying the relationship of the law to this trend. In "Minorities, Shareholders and Otherwise," the expert on globalization and digitization says that as the corporation is increasingly outsourced, it becomes a nexus of contracts between suppliers. He also notes how the diaspora, with personal ties between countries, is leading the outsourcing movement. In "Diaspora Bonds," published in 2001, Chander says the diaspora's positive response to India's appeal for financial assistance through the Resurgent India Bonds demonstrates how the diaspora can exert a nation's influence beyond its own boundaries. Contact: Anupam Chander, School of Law, (530) 754-5304, achander@ucdavis.edu. Cultural protectionProfessor Madhavi Sunder of the UC Davis School of Law can discuss legal efforts to protect culture and their relationship to international trade and the diaspora. She is co-author of a forthcoming article examining the WTO's Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement. In "The Romance of the Public Domain," she and her UC Davis co-author highlight how the agreement unjustly favors Western exploitation of culture and traditional knowledge from other heritages, and they discuss efforts to address the problem. In "Intellectual Property and Identity Politics: Playing with Fire," published in 2000, Sunder identifies the need for countries to protect legally their own artistic industries without silencing those within their culture. She says protectionist laws need to accommodate the diasporic voice exemplified by such films as "Fire," "Monsoon Wedding," and "Bend It Like Beckham." Contact: Madhavi Sunder, School of Law, (530) 752-2896, msunder@ucdavis.edu. Youth culture in AmericaSunaina Maira, associate professor of Asian American studies, looks at South Asian youth culture in the United States. She can talk about musical, political, romantic and social trends among teenagers from Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds. A cultural anthropologist, Maira is writing a book about how high-school-aged Muslim immigrants from South Asia view citizenship and national identity since the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Maira wrote "Desis in the House: Indian American Youth Culture in New York City" (2002) and co-edited "Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America" (1996). Contact: Sunaina Maira, Asian American Studies, (530) 752-6727, smaira@ucdavis.edu. ECONOMICS, LAW AND POLITICSWomen, men and jobsUC Davis economic geographer Janet Momsen has spent four decades studying the economic changes for men and women in developing countries such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. She can talk about how poor women's lives have improved in the past decade through changes in the global economy. Momsen has also studied the pros and cons of microcredit programs for women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka. Momsen is writing a gender atlas, funded by USAID, that maps the Bangladeshi men and women's literacy, reproductive health, sex ratios in rural and urban areas, and other statistics. Her latest book, "Gender and Development," was published in 2004. Her latest projects include tea tourism and micro credits in Sri Lanka. Contact: Janet Momsen, Human and Community Development, (530) 752-5061 office, (530) 758-8312 home, jdmomsen@ucdavis.edu. jdmomsen@ucdavis.edu. EconomicsWing Thye Woo, one of the world's leading experts on Asian economies, can discuss the economic and political issues in South Asia. The UC Davis professor of economics can talk about how China's entry into the World Trade Organization is impacting South Asian economies by absorbing industries, such as electronics, from Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Woo is the Asian economies adviser to the United National Millennium Development Reports, to released in early 2005, about a plan to improve the living conditions for the world's poor. Woo concentrates on international and domestic macroeconomics, economic growth and comparative economic systems. Currently he is studying economic geography, fiscal decentralization, restructuring of state-owned enterprises and international capital flows. Contact: Wing Thye Woo, Economics, (530) 752-3035, wtwoo@ucdavis.edu. Globalization of high techThe loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to offshore countries has been under way for the last three decades and will continue for the foreseeable future, says Martin Kenney, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Human and Community Development. Kenney can talk about the increasing globalization of service jobs and implications for employment. He has studied the globalization of the electronic industry and is currently studying how service jobs are being sent to India. A senior project director at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at UC Berkeley, Kenney co-edited "Locating Global Advantage: Industry Dynamics in the International Economy" (2004) and wrote "Understanding Silicon Valley (2000). Contact: Martin Kenney, Human and Community Development, (530) 750328, mfkenney@ucdavis.edu. High-tech developmentUC Davis South Asia historian James Heitzman can field a number of political, historical and cultural subjects, including the growth of high technology. Heitzman is the author of "Gifts of Power," a history of Tamil Nada in India, and "Network City," which details the rise of the high technology industry in Bangalore. Contact: James Heitzman, Summer Sessions, (530) 757-3292, jheitzman@ucdavis.edu. Religious dissent, Muslim women's rightsProfessor Madhavi Sunder of the UC Davis School of Law is an expert on women's human rights in Muslim communities and on dissent within cultural groups, including religious organizations. In "Piercing the Veil," published in the Yale Law Journal in 2003, she says law needs to accommodate internal reform movements within the Muslim religion and allow women the right to define and interpret their religion. Without a change in its approach to culture, she says, the law may become complicit in the backlash efforts of traditional leaders to silence dissent within organizations, whether over equality for women or the religious service of homosexuals. In "Cultural Dissent," published in the Stanford Law Review in 2001, she calls for the law to recognize the right of members to make internal challenges to an organization. Contact: Madhavi Sunder, School of Law, (530) 752-2896, msunder@ucdavis.edu. Intellectual propertyProfessor Anupam Chander of the School of Law can comment on intellectual property issues affecting Southeast Asia. An expert in globalization and digitization, he is co-author of a forthcoming article examining the WTO's Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Right Agreement. In "The Romance of the Public Domain," the UC Davis co-authors highlight how the agreement unjustly favors Western exploitation of culture and traditional knowledge from other heritages, and they discuss efforts to address the problem. In "Dominion in Cyberspace," published in 2003, he notes that Western interests hold most of the wealth and domain names, and he argues for a more equitable distribution of the entitlements to commercially valuable sites in cyberspace. "The siren call of the public domain should not deafen us to the song of equality in privatization," he says. Contact: Anupam Chander, School of Law, (530) 754-5304, achander@ucdavis.edu. CULTUREMountain cultural geographyUC Davis cultural geographer Nigel Allan has spent his life studying mountain peoples in the Hindukush-Himalaya rim land of South Asia. He received a Smithsonian Institution fellowship in 2000 to research the Himalayan areas of Pakistan, India and Nepal. His research, now in its fourth decade, deciphers the social, cultural and political patterns exhibited in mountain societies and habitat as these areas are incorporated into the nation-state. Allan has published "Mountains at Risk: Current Issues in Environmental Studies" (1995) and "Karakorum Himalaya" (1999). Another book, "North Pakistan: The Western Himalaya in Transition," will be published in 2005. Contact: Nigel Allan, Landscape Architecture, (530) 752-0137, njrallan@ucdavis.edu. Religious movementsUC Davis anthropologist Smriti Srinivas can talk about contemporary religious movements -- Hindu, Islamic and Buddhist -- emerging out of Asia. Srinivas is currently writing a book about a transnational religious movement led by the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba. Her research interests also include the study of cities and urban cultures, performance, the body and society, and the cultural construction of collective memory. She is the author of "The Mouths of People, the Voice of God: Buddhists and Muslims in a Frontier Community of Ladakh" (1998) and "Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in India's High-Tech City" (2001). Contact: Smriti Srinivas, Anthropology, (530) 752-9223, ssrinivas@ucdavis.edu. Popular science in IndiaUC Davis computer scientist/engineer Rao Vemuri is known as the Isaac Asimov of India for his popularization of science using his native language of Telugu, a south Indian language spoken by nearly 80 million people. Vemuri can talk about the state of science education in India as well as the Telugu culture. He has published an English-Telugu dictionary and thesaurus for science students and journalists as well as books on scientific subjects ranging from the science of blood to how life arose out of inanimate matter. Vemuri also created the non-profit Ecofoundation to promote biodiversity in India by assisting people from diverse cultural backgrounds to preserve native gene pools and other natural resources. Contact: Rao Vemuri, Applied Science, (925) 422-9167, rvemuri@ucdavis.edu. Indian and South Asian cinemaGayatri Gopinath, an assistant professor of women and gender studies at UC Davis, can talk about Indian and South Asian cinema as well as women of color in film. She teaches classes on queer film and video, South Asian diasporic film and video, and "Third World" feminist filmmaking. Her teaching and research on film focus on the ways in which queer and feminist filmmakers have challenged the regulation of gender and sexuality under different forms of nationalism. She also considers the transnational movement of cinematic images and the creation of transnational spectatorships. She has written a book, to be published this year by Duke University Press, titled "Impossible Subjects: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures." Contact: Gayatri Gopinath, Women and Gender Studies, (530) 752-7525, ggopinath@ucdavis.edu. Media contact:
Last updated May 16, 2005 |
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