Paula Chakravartty is an Associate Professor at NYU. Her books include Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), Media Policy and Globalization (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), and Global Communications: Towards a Transcultural Political Economy (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008). Her current research focuses on racial capitalism and global media infrastructures, as well as migrant mobility and justice. She serves as the Vice President of the NYU Association for University Professors (AAUP).

“The Critical Caste and Technology Studies Syllabus is an invaluable and urgent resource for scholars of Media, Technology and Culture. If we agree that Communications as a field has a theoretical canon that has systematically disavowed the centrality of colonial-racial violence and inequality, we must also recognize its parallel disavowal of caste as a descent-based structure of inequality or ‘social disorder’ that has a global footprint.  Building a persuasive pedagogic case for why caste should be understood as a ‘communicative practice,’ this well-organized, expansive and interdisciplinary syllabus offers students and researchers an invaluable resource on caste, technology and culture. As with the growing recognition across academic, policy and activist circles for knowledge, thought and critique from non-dominant perspectives on race, class, gender and sexuality, it is well past time for there to be attention and focus on critical caste studies, especially in fields and sectors associated with Technology or Digital Studies. The syllabus offers a thorough overview of the historical origins and contemporary significance of the global articulations of caste in its institutional and everyday forms. And I look forward to drawing from the well curated resources as much for my courses on South Asia as for those on Cultural Theory, Disinformation and Democracy and Political Economy and Development.”