South Asia Program
Trishna Senapaty
Graduate student
Trishna is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology. Her research interests include carceral institutions as well as practices of prison reform and rehabilitation in India.
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Ekta Joshi
Graduate student
Ekta Joshi is a PhD student in the field of applied economics and management. She is interested in studying how agriculture can be an effective instrument for economic development in developing countries. Prior to joining Cornell, Ekta worked with the International Rice Research Institute in their agri-food policy division. Her research focused on differential impact-assessment associated with the adoption of modern technology in agriculture.
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Neelanjan Datta
Graduate student
Neelanjan Datta is a PhD student in the Department of Economics at Cornell. His research is in Public Finance and Political Economy. Specifically, he uses theoretical and empirical tools to address questions in fiscal policy design, with a particular focus on policies that affect fiscal health of subnational governments (state and local). Theoretically, his work incorporates political distortions in both micro and macroeconomic frameworks. Empirically, his work aims to evaluate fiscal outcomes in developing countries.
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Shree Saha
Graduate student
Shree Saha is a PhD student in the field of applied economics and management. Her research interests include women’s empowerment, maternal and child nutrition, financial inclusion, and development. Prior to joining Cornell, she worked as a research associate at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) on topics such as rural financial literacy and young farmers’ aspirations. Shree holds a Master of Philosophy and a master’s degree in economics from IGIDR, as well as a bachelor’s degree from Jadavpur University.
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‘Bitcoin Itself May Not Last that Much Longer,’ Cornell Professor Says
Eswar Prasad, SAP
Eswar Prasad, professor of economics and trade policy, discusses the pros and cons of Bitcoin as a currency.
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Chinese Users Don’t Need a Central Bank Digital Currency, But There’s Good Reason for It: Professor
Eswar Prasad, SAP
Eswar Prasad, professor of economics and international trade policy, talks about why the People’s Bank of China wanting a digital currency.
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The Most Important Meeting Yet for Global Pandemic Response — and Drugmakers
Kaushik Basu, SAP
In this op-ed, Kaushik Basu, professor of economics, and Nicole Hassoun, a former Einaudi Center visiting scholar, argue that global health leaders must adopt a treaty on pandemic preparedness and response and that it must prioritize new incentives for pharmaceutical companies and equity between nations.
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Afghan Students Find Haven at Cornell
Einaudi Center Welcomes Women Scholars
“The events that brought these students here are traumatic, but their stories demonstrate real bravery and leadership,” said VP Wendy Wolford.
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Caricaturing Religious Difference and the Pop Culture Muslim
February 21, 2022
12:15 pm
Uris Hall, G08
Talk by Samah Choudhury (Religious Studies, Ithaca College)
Our contemporary moment has witnessed a precipitous rise in the presence of American Muslim comedians in pop culture - on television, movies, and on the stage. I map their unprecedented popularity to the contemporary moment when American “Muslim” humor is named as such, as well as the complications that arise from imposing a religious referent interchangeably with terms like “racial” or “ethnic” as they relate to the constitution of the 21st-century Western subject. This gendering, racialization, and a growing progressive consensus on issues of intersectionality have come to provide a common language for comedians to identify as Muslim over strictly racial and ethnic nomenclature. Yet this humor replicates a subjugating racialized, religionized, and "masculine" vision of Islam – outside of themselves – by limiting its articulation to normative Sunni ideals and injunctions. For comedians like Hasan Minhaj, there is an inconsistent stepping in and out in of language that names him as Muslim, Indian, Desi, or simply “brown” that relies on aesthetics of American Blackness to register an opposition to white secularity.
Samah Choudhury is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Ithaca College. Her research surrounds Islam, humor, and the politics of social legibility in the United States. Her current book manuscript looks at the ways that Islam and Muslims are articulated through standup comedy and how they speak back to broader transnational practices and discourses of race, masculinity, and secularism. She holds a PhD from UNC Chapel Hill in Religious Studies.
Co-sponsored by the Asian American Studies Program and the Religious Studies Program.
Photo: Netflix/Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
South Asia Program
Comparative Muslim Societies Program
JP Morgan Boss Regrets Saying Bank Will Outlast Chinese Communist Party
“Dimon’s apology shows the degree of deference foreign businesses have to show to the Chinese government in order to remain in its good graces and maintain access to the country's markets,” says Eswar Prasad, professor of economics and international trade policy.