Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program
Field of Specialization:	Anthropology
Name:	Mr. Anthony Cordaro
Official Address:	University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania
Indian Host Institution:	Panjab University, Chandigrah
Duration of Grant & Start Date :	Duration: 9 months August 2011

Brief Bio:

Anthony Cordaro has an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in South Asian studies and minored in nnthropology and near eastern languages and civilizations. He wrote his thesis on social networks among truck drivers in northern India and the importance that dhabas play in truck drivers' daily practice, for which he spent months living at a dhaba on the side of the highway in Uttar Pradesh and traveling throughout the state with numerous truck drivers. He first went to India in 2009 as a CLS scholar to study Urdu for the summer session at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) in Lucknow. He received another CLS in 2010 to study Punjabi at the AIIS in Chandigarh, where he spent his time outside of class, at a roadside bicycle stand, apprenticed to a bicycle mechanic who mostly catered to the Bhojpuri-speaking immigrant community. Anthony is interested in studying human migration and movement, labor, and aspires to one day return to school and get a Ph. D. in Anthropology. He is currently working at achieving fluency in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Farsi/Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Spanish and French. Mr. Cordaro's Fulbright-Nehru research is titled as "Fitting into the Grid: An Ethnography of Migrant Communities in Urban Punjab." Using participant-observation and interviews Anthony will be examining how Uttar Pradeshi and Bihari migrants living in Chandigarh create and maintain support networks, their use of clothing, music, language, diet, and codes of behavior to create and maintain their identity to distinguish themselves from their Punjabi employers and neighbors. Also,Mr. Codaro will investigate how this drastic socio-cultural dichotomy between Punjabi residents and migrants translates spatially within the city.