Teaching Fellows

Pranathi Diwakar’s research interests include social change, caste and social difference, music, urban and cultural sociology, with a focus on qualitative methods including interviewing and ethnographic methods. Her doctoral dissertation project was an ethnographic investigation of the politics of caste, musicality, and placemaking in two musical genres situated in the southern Indian city of Chennai: Carnatic and Gaana, which are associated with caste groups of opposing valences. In analyzing how sound operates at two extremes of caste society, this dissertation shows how actors in these two scenes make meaning of their aesthetics, social and spatial locations, and political ideologies. Diwakar’s current research interests include caste, sound, migration, and politicization. 

Learn more about Diwakar here.