Linta Varghese
Assistant Professor
Ethnic and Race Studies
EMAIL: lvarghese@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: S-623G
Office Hours: Professor Varghese is on fellowship leave for the 2023-24 academic year.
Phone: +1 (212) 776-7823
Linta Varghese is Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University New York. She teaches courses in Asian American and Asian diaspora studies. Her current research investigates the cross-class and solidarity organizing in the US domestic workers movement through the universalization of care. This project continues her work examining domestic work and emerges through her past engagement with South Asian American domestic worker organizing.
Her work has appeared in journals such as Cultural Dynamics, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Ethnic Studies Review and CUNY Forum, and in edited volumes including The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power.
Prior to joining the faculty at BMCC, CUNY, Varghese was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at Vassar College, and an adjunct at Hunter College, Eugene Lang at The New School, and Columbia University. She co-established the Contingent Faculty Caucus of the Association of Asian American Studies. Since 2020, she has served as the coordinator of the BMCC-Hunter College AANAPISI Bridge Initiative, a Department of Education Minority Serving Institution grant.
Expertise
South Asian racialization, Asian American New York City, domestic worker organizing, Asian American Studies at Community Colleges
Degrees
Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, University of Texas in Austin
M.A. in Cultural Anthropology, University of Texas in Austin
B.A. in Asian Studies, University of Texas in Austin
Courses Taught
- The Asian American presence from the mid-nineteenth century to the present is studied. Three periods, 1848 to 1943, 1943 to 1965, and 1965 to the present are examined. Topics are desigend to focus on the impact of historical processes on the cultural, economic, and political experiences of diverse Asian American groups in urban and rural communities. The multi-ethnic aspects of Asian American communities are explored.
- Representative works reflecting the collective experiences of Asian American writers are analyzed. Fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction written from Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian cultural perspectives are discussed. Prerequisite: ENG 201 or ENG 121 NOTE: ASN 339 satisfies requirements for a third semester of the English sequence.
- This course surveys the long history of cross-racial and inter-ethnic interactions among immigrants, migrants, people of color and working people in the United States and the wider world from the era of mercantile capitalism in the sixteenth century to the present. By making inroads into the dynamic worlds that indigenous people, people of African and Latin American descent, European Americans, and Asian Americans made and remade, the course aims to reach across borders of all kinds, including national boundaries, to cultivate global, transnational and comparative perspectives on race and ethnicity. In particular, it places emphasis on relationships and conflicts between these diverse groups, especially how they were treated and defined in relation to each other. Broadly, this course is concerned with how these groups struggle to stake out their place in a highly unequal world.
- According to the 2010 census, 1 in 8 New Yorkers are of Asian descent. Yet the histories and identities of Asian American communities in New York City, and on the East Coast more generally, have not been as visible in academic scholarship as Asian Americans on the West Coast. This class will examine the diverse Asian American communities that have populated the city from the late 19th century onwards through topics such as racial segregation, ethnic economies and labor, global and transnational flows, gentrification, community institutions and inter-racial community relations. One of the main goals for this class is for students to experience Asian American spaces in NYC with a scholar’s eye. To this end, the class will study research methods, undertake field trips to Asian American and transnational Asian institutions and organizations, and produce a final paper based on first hand/primary research.
Research and Projects
South Asian racialization, discourses of care, gendered labor, domestic workers, Asian American New York City, diasporic plant practices and theories of land
Publications
Special Issues
2023. co-editor (with Soniya Munshi), “One Century After Thind.” Ethnic Studies Review. 46 (1-2).
2019. co-editor (with Ujju Aggarwal), “Together.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly. 47 (3-4).
2018. co-editor (with Soniya Munshi) “Building Asian American Studies Across the Community College Classroom: A Model.” CUNY Forum: Asian and Asian American Studies, 6 (1): 10-20.
Select Articles
In-progress: “The Good Employer: Universalizing Care in the US Domestic Workers’ Movement.”
2023 (with Eve Dunbar) “Crafting Connections: Creating Counterspaces to Academic Diversity Labor” Women: A Cultural Review, 34 (4): 453-468.
2023 (with Soniya Munshi) “One Century After Thind: An Introduction” Ethnic Studies Review. 46 (1-2): 3-11.
2019. (with Ujju Aggarwal). “Introduction.” Together, special issue of WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 47 (3-4): 13-24.
2013. “Looking Home: Gender, Work and the Domestic in Theorizations of the South Asian Diaspora.” In South Asian Migrants in an Age of US Power, edited by Vivek Bald et al., 156-175. New York: New York University Press.
2012 (with Saba Waheed and Seema Agnani) Deepening Roots and Creating Space: Building a Better Future for New York’s South Asians, For Chhaya Community Development Corporation, New York City.
2006. “Constructing a Worker Identity: Class, Experience and Organizing in Workers’ Awaaz.” Cultural Dynamics 18(2): 189-211.
Honors, Awards and Affiliations
2023 Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative Research Grant, Andrew Mellon Foundation.
2020 – Program Coordinator. BMCC-Hunter College AANAPISI Bridge Initiative, Department of Education Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Minority Serving Institution Grant.
2016-2018 Project Director. “Building Asian American Studies across the Community College Classroom,” National Endowment for the Humanities.
2018 Faculty Fellowship Publication Program, CUNY.
2015-2016 Communities That Work Partnership Fellow, The Aspen Institute.
2015 Faculty Innovations in Teaching with Technology, Hunter College, CUNY.
2009 Co-Director. Gender and Diaspora Workshop, Mellon 23 Grant, Vassar College.
2004 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asian American Studies, Vassar College.
