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Education
- PhD: 2006 University of California, Berkeley
- BA: 2000 University of California, Berkeley
Research and Teaching Areas
Gender, political economy, globalization, development, nationalism, cultural studies
Area Specialties:
India, South Africa
Biography
Smitha Radhakrishnan's work in and out of the classroom focuses on questions of gender, globalization, and nationalism. Her newly published book, Appropriately Indian: Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class (Duke University Press, 2011) examines the culture of Indian IT professionals in urban India, Silicon Valley, and South Africa. In her previous research, Radhakrishnan has studied meanings of race, ethnicity, and femininity among South African Indians in Durban (South Africa). Her work has appeared in journals such as Qualitative Sociology, Theory and Society, and Gender and Society, among others.
At Wellesley, Radhakrishnan classes all engage a global pespective that decenters the United States, while encouraging students to carefully examine their own positionality in an interconnected world. She is a part of Wellesley's South Asia Studies faculty and teaches courses that also fulfill requirements for Women's Studies. Her courses include: Sociology 108 (Thinking Global: An Introduction to Sociology), Soc 233 (Gender and Power in South Asia), Soc 234 (Gender and International Development), Soc 251 (Sociology of Race), and Soc 309 (Critical Intersections: Race, Class, Gender, and the Nation).