Archives: Meet Our USA Fulbrighters

Leslie Shampaine

Ms. Leslie Shampaine has been telling stories throughout her professional life, from the ballet stage where she performed across the world during a 13-year career, to the television screen where she has produced award-winning programs for PBS, Discovery Channel, A&E, CBS, and Al Jazeera.

Her background in the arts led her to produce and direct the feature documentary, Call Me Dancer, in 2023. The film has received critical acclaim and an award from the New York Women in Film & Television for Excellence in Documentary Directing.

Ms. Shampaine’s work includes cultural and educational programming. For eight years, she was part of the production team that created the biographical films for the Emmy Award-winning Kennedy Center Honors. She was senior production executive at Al Jazeera English in Washington, D.C., where she managed current affairs programming in North America, including the award-winning investigative series, Fault Lines and People & Power, and the discussion programs, The Stream, Upfront, and Empire.

Ms. Shampaine produced the PBS programs One World: India; Closer to Truth: Cosmos, Consciousness and Meaning; and Avoiding Armageddon. Her other productions include Who Betrayed Anne Frank (Discovery Channel) – winner of a Telly, a Cine Golden Eagle, and a Gold Remi at the Houston World Fest; DC Cupcakes (TLC); the Smithsonian Networks series’ Seriously Amazing Objects; and Fireworks (A&E, with George Plimpton), which was nominated for an Emmy and an ACE.

She has continued to work as a teaching artist to youth from underserved backgrounds and to seniors with physical disabilities. She has taught dance to children at the Lighthouse for the Blind; worked with seniors to record their personal stories for NPR’s StoryCorps; and taught movement to people with Parkinson’s disease through Dance for PD.

Ms. Shampaine’s Fulbright-Nehru project is seeking to understand the methodologies of arts education with a focus on digital storytelling as it is directed toward underserved youth. Her research is looking at the blossoming of the digital format and how it is impacting storytelling, teaching, communication, and most significantly, participation in a worldwide community. Besides, she is starting the social-impact stage of her film project, Call Me Dancer, to create culturally relevant videos targeted toward youth, to be used by teachers and arts educators. She is also creating short-form videos with curriculum guides for teachers who engage students in meaningful examinations of relevant social issues.

Sunanda Sanyal

Originally from India, Dr. Sunanda Sanyal is currently a professor of art history and critical studies at the College of Art & Design of Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has been teaching at this institution since 1999. He has a PhD in art history from Emory University (2000), an MFA in art history from Ohio University (1993), and an MFA in visual arts from the University of California, San Diego (1990).

Dr. Sanyal’s research interests include contemporary artists from former colonies in global discourses, and politics of representation and identity. He has chaired panels on contemporary artists of color at various conferences, including those of the College Art Association, the African Studies Association, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, and the American Council of South and Southeast Asian Art. He has published articles and reviews of contemporary art in journals and contributed chapters to volumes of essays on art history and criticism. Some of his publications are: “Critiquing the Critique: El Anatsui and the Politics of Inclusion”, World Art (Routledge); “‘Being Modern’: Identity Debates and Makerere’s Art School in the 1960s”, A Companion to Modern African Art (Wiley-Blackwell); and “Teaching Art History at an Art School: Making Sense from the Margin”, Transforming Classroom Culture: Inclusive Pedagogical Approaches (Palgrave Macmillan). In 2009, Dr. Sanyal produced and directed a two-part documentary film, A Homecoming Spectacle, on the visual culture of Durga Pujo in Kolkata, focusing on the involvement of contemporary artists in the décor of the festival. Currently, he is also serving as a content fellow for SmartHistry.org; besides, he is working on a book project on a history of civic statuary in Kolkata, India.

Dr. Sanyal’s Fulbright-Nehru project is constructing a historical narrative across three phases of Kolkata’s civic statuary: the colonial commemoration of prominent men of the British Raj; the post-Independence celebration of the leaders of Indian freedom struggle; and the current populist trend of statues of cultural celebrities. This comparative inquiry of the three phases is tracing the evolving role of this genre of public images in shaping Kolkata’s visual and political landscapes. The aim is to locate points of overlap and divergence that illuminate the dual role of Kolkata’s public statues as both aesthetic markers and tools of political identity.

Nikhila Raol

Dr. Nikhila Raol is currently an associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery and pediatrics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She practices pediatric otolaryngology, with a focus on pediatric feeding and sleep disorders; she also trains residents and fellows. Dr. Raol received her medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas and her master’s degree in public health from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. Her research primarily focuses on the management of pediatric feeding disorder, with an emphasis on the healthcare burden associated with the condition; she is also looking into the prevention of conversion of acute pediatric feeding disorder to chronic pediatric feeding disorder. Besides, she is involved in research on treatment of refractory obstructive sleep apnea and serves as the site principal investigator for the National Institutes of Health-funded study looking at cognitive outcomes in children with Trisomy 21 undergoing upper-airway stimulation for obstructive sleep apnea. In addition to the National Institutes of Health, her research has been funded by the American Society of Pediatric Otolaryngology, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Marcus Foundation. Dr. Raol has published articles in several leading otolaryngology journals, including JAMA Otolaryngology, Journal of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, and The Laryngoscope.

Dr. Raol’s Fulbright-Nehru project is evaluating the role of ankyloglossia, or tongue tie, in the successful maintenance of breastfeeding in Telangana, India. As part of her research, she is conducting observational field studies and interviews with mothers and clinicians who manage mother–infant dyads. Apart from contributing to scholarship on strategies for successful maintenance of breastfeeding, this research will contribute to the development of evidence-based breastfeeding recommendations worldwide.

Mary Rader

Ms. Mary Rader is currently the South Asian studies librarian and the head of the Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team at the University of Texas (UT) Libraries. She received her BA in art history from Kalamazoo College, her MA in international studies (with a South Asia focus) from the University of Washington, and her MLS from the University of Texas; throughout all three programs, she conducted language training in Tamil and Hindi/Urdu and was an American Institute of Indian Studies Language Fellow (Tamil) as well as a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow (Hindi).

Before coming to UT, Ms. Rader held similar positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Michigan, and Chicago Public Library. As a South Asian studies librarian, her work inherently focuses on content from and about all South Asian countries, in all formats, in all disciplines, and in all South Asian languages. Finding collections that have hitherto been ignored or hidden and making them publicly available is a particular focus of her efforts. A national leader in cooperative collection development efforts for South Asian studies, she regularly partners with the South Asian Materials Project (SAMP), the South Asian Open Archives (SAOA), and other collaborative initiatives.

Ms. Rader’s project is seeking and documenting “Hidden Archives” in Delhi and in Chennai. The goals are to locate personal and private archives housed outside of academic and public domains and to document the content and condition of these collections. The study is setting the groundwork for future preservation and discovery of these materials. Beyond traditional deliverables (publications, grant proposals, bibliographic tools), this research will deepen networks for future and ongoing inter-institutional and international relationships between collectors, scholars, and librarians of South Asia.

Kathleen O’Reilly

Dr. Kathleen O’Reilly is a professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University and is its presidential impact fellow. She has over 25 years of research experience in gender, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions in rural and urban India. She is trained as a feminist geographer, ethnographer, and South Asia scholar. Her qualitative research on gender norms has identified new information regarding the negative influence of these norms on physical, environmental, social, and sexual stressors related to WASH. Over the course of her career, she has sought an in-depth understanding of internal community and household dynamics when it comes to control and access to resources, like time and toilets, for women and the socially marginalized groups. Her research highlights the need to understand the complexities of social relations and sanitation policy as they pertain to spatial patterns of inequality in WASH. Recently, she created and taught short workshops on best practices for research on sensitive topics based on her ethnographic research in India. Her work has been funded by, among others, the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has also published in such prestigious journals as Geoforum, Health & Place, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Environment & Urbanization, Water Security, and World Development.

In rural India, where conditions require women’s intensive, unpaid domestic work, it is urgent to study how it reproduces gender inequality; this will also add to the global knowledge on unpaid labor’s gendered impact. Dr. O’Reilly’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating the workloads of unmarried and married rural young women; the latter living in matrilocal or patrilocal households. Despite evidence that access to leisure time contributes to women’s well-being, a large gap remains regarding young women’s leisure activities in rural India. This project is attempting to fill that gap by analyzing the gendered geographies of domestic labor and leisure. It is also making a methodological contribution by recording the work and leisure conditions of populations with low literacy through audio diaries.

Vasanthy Narayanaswami

Dr. Vasanthy Narayanaswami is a professor of biochemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). She obtained her PhD in chemistry (biochemistry) from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, did a postdoctoral training as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, and a research associateship at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her research work involves investigating the role of apolipoprotein E (apoE), the cholesterol transport protein, in relation to cardiovascular ailment and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), two major global biomedical issues. She employs a combination of biochemical, molecular, and cell biological, as well as spectroscopic approaches to examine the role that dysfunctional high-density lipoprotein (HDL) (aka “the good cholesterol”) plays in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. She also studies the role of oxidative stress on HDL biology and its function in the amyloidogenesis process in AD brains at the molecular and cellular levels. Besides, her research group evaluates the use of HDL nanodiscs as drug-delivery and targeting vehicles.

Dr. Narayanaswami has over 75 publications in peer-reviewed journals, several with students as co-authors. In 2017, she received the title of Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA) from the American Heart Association (AHA) for her meritorious contributions and commitment to AHA’s mission. She has received several awards and honors in recognition of her research and scholarly activities. Noteworthy among these are the 2020 Faculty Research Award from the California State University Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology and the 2020 CSULB Outstanding Professor Award.

Dr. Narayanaswami is an ardent advocate of equity and diversity in biomedical research and directs several federally funded programs that are designed to enhance equity, diversity, and inclusion in research.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Narayanaswami is addressing the etiology of AD. She is engaged in investigating the physiochemical aspects of amyloid plaque formation, a hallmark feature of AD, using the sophisticated mass spectrometry and imaging tools at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Hyderabad in India. This project has significance also because it calls for combining forces and initiating collaborations between two major educational and research organizations.

Preetha Mani

Dr. Preetha Mani received her BA from Tufts University and her MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Mani is associate professor of South Asian literatures in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL) and core faculty member in the program in comparative literature at Rutgers University. She is the author of The Idea of Indian Literature: Gender, Genre, and Comparative Method (Northwestern University Press and Permanent Black, 2022). Her research expertise lies in modern Hindi, Tamil, and Indian literatures, and she has published widely on issues of translation, women’s writing, and feminism in India; literary realism and modernism; postcolonial studies; and world literature. She has also published translations of Hindi and Tamil literature, autobiography, and criticism into English. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, American Institute of Indian Studies, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Fulbright.

Dr. Mani’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining Tamil new poetry, a form of modernist free verse that became popular in 1950s’ magazines and set a benchmark against which later poets defined their work. By the 1980s, new poetry writing had democratized the poetic form. Exploring new poetry’s development in print culture, she is proposing that this genre was a primary avenue for writers to cross ideological boundaries and to draw inspiration from each other and from writers in other Indian and world languages. Dr. Mani’s research is attempting to demonstrate that rather than being a linguistic outlier to the national canon, Tamil new poetry was a means for generating ideas for a postcolonial pan-Indian literature built on the poetic form.

Pamela Lothspeich

Dr. Pamela Lothspeich is associate professor of South Asian studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she has been teaching since 2008. She is a literary scholar and cultural historian whose work intersects with epic studies, performance studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies. She has published extensively on modern iterations of Indian epics, particularly as they appear in Hindi literature, theatre, and film. Her previous research project was on the Radheshyam Ramayan and the theatre of Ramlila. Her books include Epic Nation: Reimagining the Mahabharata in the Age of Empire (OUP, 2009) and the co-edited volume, Mimetic Desires: Impersonation and Guising across South Asia (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022). She has also guest-edited the special issue, “The Field of Ramlila”, in the Asian Theatre Journal (Spring 2020).

Formerly, she taught at Michigan State University (2004–08) and Chicago University (2003– 04). She holds a PhD in South Asian studies and comparative literature from Columbia University (2003) and an MA in Asian languages and literature from the University of Washington (1996).

Dr. Lothspeich’s research project is on Raslila, an Indian performance genre spanning theatre, dance, music, and ritual, which enacts stories about the Hindu god Krishna and the goddess Radha. Many stories in the tradition emphasize Krishna’s youthful antics and loving interactions with his devotees. Raslila is related to other forms of devotional theatre, especially the Ramlila centered on the Hindu god Ram. This project aims to provide fresh insights into Raslila in all its material social, political, and aesthetic contexts, and also into its intertwined history with Ramlila.

Gopal Krishnan

Prof. Gopal Krishnan is a trustee professor of accountancy and the coordinator of the PhD program in accounting at Bentley University. Before joining Bentley, he was the chair of the Accounting Department at Kogod School of Business, American University, Washington, D.C. He has also taught at Lehigh University and George Mason University. He is a chartered accountant, certified public accountant, and a certified management accountant. Professor Krishnan is cited in the Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers for his teaching excellence. His research addresses issues concerning auditor independence and audit quality, corporate governance and earnings management. He has published 80 articles in accounting and finance journals, including Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, Review of Accounting Studies, Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of the American Taxation Association, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Management Accounting Research, and Journal of Business Ethics. His work has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Accounting Today, CNBC.com, Reuters, CFOWorld, and CFO.com. His co-authored article on a synthesis of audit-quality literature was awarded the 2016 Best Paper Award by the Auditing Section of the American Accounting Association. He was a senior editor of Accounting Horizons and holds a PhD from the University of North Texas.

Business groups (BGs) are dominant forms of industrial organization in India. For example, BG-affiliated firms account for 67 per cent of the total Bombay Stock Exchange market capitalization. However, despite the importance of BGs in India, there is a paucity of empirical research on the quality of audits of firms affiliated with BGs. Prof. Krishnan’s Fulbright-Nehru project is conducting an empirical study of the audit quality of Indian firms which are affiliated with BGs. Specifically, the study is examining whether there is a difference in audit quality between Indian firms affiliated with BGs and those that are unaffiliated (standalone firms).

David Ghertner

Prof. David Ghertner received his BA from Colby College and MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University where he previously served as the director of the South Asian Studies Program. He is the author of Rule by Aesthetics: World-Class City Making in Delhi (Oxford University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Futureproof: Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life (Duke University Press, 2020) and Land Fictions: The Commodification of Land in City and Country (Cornell University Press, 2021). His research expertise lies in urban geography, and he has published widely on informal housing, property rights, urban aesthetics, and environmental governance. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

A series of digital property reform programs are currently spreading across rural India, utilizing drone mapping and digital technologies to map, title, and enclose landholdings. Digitized property rights are deemed essential to fighting poverty and fostering rural development, but also face technical and political challenges that vary by region and land tenure. The translation of customary rights, bordering of land, and construction of data infrastructure depend upon complex bureaucratic work. Through ethnographic research involving engineers and bureaucrats who are implementing the reforms in Goa and Delhi NCR and by interacting with residents impacted by these reforms, Prof. David Ghertner’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring how digital property is reconstituting landownership in India.