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Connecticut College professor´s new book looks at race, culture and identity in the Indian American community

September 24, 2007

The Indian American community is one of the fastest growing immigrant communities in the United States. Unlike previous generations, however, these highly trained immigrants - medical doctors, engineers, scientists and university professors - live in a transnational world where the internet, satellite television and international travel complicate their cultural identity.

In "American Karma: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Indian Diaspora," Sunil Bhatia, associate professor of human development at Connecticut College, uses participation observation and in-depth interviews to explore how these professionals from India redefine their self identity after they are inserted into the racial dynamics of American society and transformed into "people of color."

"This book describes how professional, middle-class Indians living in a Northeastern suburb of the United States understand the racial and cultural labels created by their white neighbors and coworkers," Bhatia writes in his introduction to the book. "The skin color, bindis, saris, food, gods and goddesses and ´thick accents´ of the professional Indians in this book become the vehicles through which their sense of difference is articulated by their suburban neighbors and coworkers."

An expert in ethnography and qualitative methods, Bhatia´s innovative approach to psychological fieldwork included interviewing and observing the everyday activities of 38 first-generation Indian immigrant men and women living and working in suburban southeastern Connecticut. His research resulted in "American Karma," an interdisciplinary qualitative study in psychology and human development that has been published in August by New York University Press.

"We live in an age in which transnational immigration, border crossing and global media are proliferating at an increasing rate," says Bhatia. "Migration, travel and the increasing contact zones between cultures and people have created transnational communities across the metropolitan suburbs of the United States."

That transnational status in today´s globalized world complicates the Indian immigrant´s quest for self-identity, Bhatia says. His research examined how these diasporic families reinterpret and redefine their sense of self and home as they try to cope with their new status as foreigners and immigrants in contemporary American society.

"These suburban diasporic communities are part of the second wave of new, non-European migration to the United States and are important sites for studying personhood and identity," says Bhatia.

Bhatia, a professor at Connecticut College since 1999, has published more than a dozen articles and book chapters on issues related to language, self, immigrant identity and cultural psychology. Bhatia received the 2006 Sigmund Koch Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology, presented each year to a psychologist who is within 10 years of having earned a doctorate degree and has made promising contributions to theoretical or philosophical psychology. In September 2005, he received Connecticut College´s prestigious John King Teaching Award, and in 2001, the students of Unity House awarded Bhatia the Tyrone Ferdnance Award for excellence in teaching and community service.

For more information contact: Amy Sullivan (860) 439-2526; amy.sullivan@conncoll.edu