Alka Kurian: Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, and model minority discourse

IAS faculty member Alka Kurian had a busy summer! She gave virtual lectures in June and September on "Youth, Education, Gender, and Human Rights in India" to students of the Foreign Services Institute, and presented a virtual paper entitled “Growing Up South Asian in America Today” at the University of Lucknow, India. She also participated in virtual discussion panels that included “Being a Model Minority in the Time of COVID," (organized by the South Asian Women’s Professional Network), and “Love and Solidarity in the Time of Corona,” (organized by NWSA's South Asian Feminist Caucus co-founder Fawzia Afzal-Khan). And she moderated the online panel entitled “Tasveer Community Speaks: South Asian and Black Solidarity." Across all of these activities, Kurian focused on the politics of race, caste, class, and gender embedded in the model minority discourse set against the fallout of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Kurian also released more episodes of her podcast whose details can be accessed at South Asian Films and Books.