2022 Summer Graduate Research Fellow: Shikha Nehra

Shikha Nehra is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University and received a 2022 summer graduate research fellowship from the Center for South Asia. 

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Nehra's project, Plural Political Imaginings: Assamese Publics and Counterpublics, explores questions of political membership through its socio-cultural terrain. Nehra focuses on ethnic, cultural, and literary associations in Assam as critical spaces which, besides the state, are instrumental in establishing discourses around identity, ethnicity, nationalism, belonging, and citizenship.

Project Summary:

This project investigates how regional histories, geographies, socio-cultural practices, and policies matter in contesting belonging and citizenship at various scales. Through 18-months of ethnographic and archival research in the Brahmaputra Valley region of Assam, Nehra will examine how various communities deploy language, culture, and ethnicity, in claiming and negotiating recognition as citizens. Using ethnographic methods, Nehra will focus on the social and linguistic practices, narratives, and forms of sociality through which people claim and perform an Assamese identity in their everyday life. The project also interrogates the development of Assamese language, literature, and culture by the state and non-state literary associations from colonial to post-colonial period through rigorous archival research in the Assam State Archives in Guwahati and Assam Sahitya Sabha Archives in Jorhat district. 

The Center for South Asia grant has been critical in supporting my advanced language training in Assamese to carry out this archival research, along with providing funding for travel and accommodation in Guwahati and Jorhat.