Rao wins Brantlinger-Naremore prize
Doctoral student Pallavi Rao has won the 2017 Brantlinger-Naremore essay prize in cultural studies for her essay “The Five-Point Indian: Caste, Masculinity, and English Language in the Paratexts of Chetan Bhagat.”
The prize recognizes an essay by a graduate student focusing on issues in the field of cultural studies, either at the theoretical level or by modeling analyses of cultural artifacts and processes.
In the paper, Rao studies media utterances of Indian celebrity figure Chetan Bhagat to demonstrate how caste references are covertly embedded in masculine media texts. Rao attempts a feminist scholarship about English-language media in her essay, which is also anti-caste in orientation.
The Brantlinger-Naremore Prize is named in honor of professors emeriti Patrick Brantlinger and James Naremore for their work in the field of cultural studies. Submissions are open to graduate students who are minoring in Cultural Studies.
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