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Bandana Purkayastha

Bandana Purkayastha

 

Bandana Purkayastha

Associate Professor of Sociology
and Asian American Studies

Manchester Hall - Room 215
Phone: 860 486 . 3791
Phone: 570. 9222 in West Hartford
Email: Bandana.Purkayastha@uconn.edu

 

 

Granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 2005, Bandana Purkayastha received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Connecticut. In 2004, she was recognized by the State of Connecticut for her Outstanding Advocacy on behalf of South Asian immigrants in Connecticut, and she received the University of Connecticut's Woman of Color Award for Excellence in Leadership, Achievement and Service. She won the Teaching Promise Excellence Award from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 2001. And in 2000, she was awarded a UConn Research Foundation Grant of $7,845 to study transnational ties and second generation South Asian youth. An international perspective, use of web-based teaching and learning tools, active learning and research projects are central features of her courses.

Research Interests and Works in Progress include transnational communities; urban Sociology; Gender and Ethnicity; migration; and South Asia. "Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World" will be published in May, 2005 by Rutgers Univ. Press. Her book The Power of Informal Networks: Lessons in Social Change from South Asia and West Africa, co-edited with M. Subramaniam was published by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield, in 2004.

Selected Publications

Books

  • Narayan, A. and Purkayastha, B. 2008. Living our Religions: South Asian Hindu and Muslim Women Narrate Their Experiences. Dulles, VA: Kumarian Press.
  • Purkayastha, B. 2005. Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transitional World. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
  • Purkayastha, Bandana. 2009. Another World of Experience? South Asian Diasporic Groups and the Transitional Context. Journal of South Asian Diasporas. (in press)
  • Stone, R, Purkayastha, B. and Berhdahl, T. 2006. Beyond Asian American: Examining Conditions and Mechanisms of Eraning Inequality for Filipina, Asian Indian and Non-Hispanic White Women. Sociological Perspectives, 49: 261-281.
Chapters
  • Purkayastha, Bandana and Narayman, Anjana. 2009. Bridges and Chasms. Orientalism and the Making of Indian Americans in New England. In Asian Americans in New England, edited by Monica Chiu. New England University Press.
  • Purkayastha, Bandana. (2009/in press.) Tagore and Human Rights. In Celebrating Tagore, edited by Clinton Sealey and Rama Datta. Kolkata: Allied Publishers.

Current projects on Asian Americans include: a book length manuscript on Asian Americans and aging, and another on web-based discourses of student groups (with Anjana Narayan, CSU-Pomona.)

Download Bandana Purkayastha's Curriculum Vitae (PDF)