Paula Chakravartty
James Weldon Johnson Associate Professor
puc1@nyu.edu
(212) 992-6307
Room 816, 239 Greene Street
B.A., Political Science, McGill University, 1991
M.S., Communication, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1995
Ph.D., Communication, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1999
Paula Chakravartty is James Weldon Johnson Associate Professor at the Gallatin School and the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Her research and teaching interests span comparative political economy, migration, labor and social movements , and the study of colonial and racial power. She is currently completing a monograph on Media and Economic Violence. She is also working on two on-going collaborative projects: a co-authored book on Media, Race and the Infrastructures of Empire; and a field-based partnership research project on migrant mobility and debt in Uttar Pradesh, India. She has published widely in numerous journals across disciplines including American Quarterly, Antipode, Economic and Political Weekly, The Journal of Communication, Media Culture and Society, International Journal of Communication, Political Communication, among others. Her books include Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime (Co-edited with Denise Ferreira da Silva with Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), Media Policy and Globalization (Co-Authored by Katharine Sarikakis with Edinburgh University Press, 2006), and Global Communications: Towards a Transcultural Political Economy (Co-Edited with Yuezhi Zhao with Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008). She serves as the Vice President of the NYU Chapter of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors). To read recent publications see: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12876 and https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2020.1771743
Performances, Productions, Exhibitions & Releases
2021
Paula Chakravartty and Ajantha Subramanian wrote “Why Is Caste Inequality Still Legal in America?,” for the May 25, 2021 edition of The New York Times.
Awards & Honors
2021
Paula Chakravartty has been awarded a 2022 NYU Humanities Center Fellowship to support her book project Technologies of Freedom? Racial Capitalism and the Infrastructures of Empire, a study that charts the Cold War lineages of today’s rise of algorithmic right-wing nationalisms and social media-triggered fake news targeting minorities and migrants.
Books
2013
Denisre Ferreira da Silva and Paula Chakravartty's Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime was published by John Hopkins Press.
Edited Volumes
2013
Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime, edited by Paula Chakravartty and Denise Ferreira da Silva was published by John Hopkins Press.
2008
Paula Chakravartty and Yuezhi Zhao edited volume, Global Communications: Toward a Transcultural Political Economy, was published by Rowman & Littlefield.
Teaching and Research Interests
media markets and modernity; media and empire; news cultures and democracy; media and global social movements; political economy of development; gender labor and consumer culture; media migration and race
Recent News
AWARDS AND HONORS
Professor Paula Chakravartty has been awarded the 2017 Angela Davis/W.E.B DuBois Faculty Nia Award. The award recognizes an NYU faculty member for demonstrating an outstanding commitment to the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice through their academic work, research, teaching and scholarship, utilizing diverse media and scholarship in their teaching, facilitating dialogue and educational programming, and advocating for, mentoring, and/or empowering, marginalized or underrepresented students and/or faculty.
PUBLICATIONS
Professor Paula Chakravartty co-edited, with Srirupa Roy, a special issue of the International Journal of Communication, which includes an the introduction from the editors: "Mediatized Populisms: Interasian Lineages." The issue was published in October 2017 by the University of California's UNC Annenberg Press.
Along with Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, Charlton McIlwain, Paula Chakravartty co-authored "#CommunicationSoWhite," which appeared in the Journal of Communication, Volume 68, Issue 2, in April 2018.
Professor Chakravartty edited a special issue on Infrastructures of Empire for the peer-reviewed journal Media, Culture and Society, which was published by Sage Publications in May 2016.
Along with Srirupa Roy, Professor Chakravartty edited the May 2015 issue for the journal Television and New Media. The articles in Modi and the Media: Indian Politics and Electoral Aftermath focus on the rapid expansion of the commercial media field and the resurgence of the Hindu Nationalist BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi.
CONFERENCES AND TALKS
Professor Chakravartty is the co-convener, along with Zeynep Gambetti (Bogaziçi University) and Srirupa Roy (University of Göttingen), of the 2016 InterAsian Connections Conference which was held in Seoul, Korea, in April 2016.
Professor Chakravartty presented a paper at the 2016 Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Citizenship Conference,:“Digital Media and the Future(s) of Democracy,” at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in May 2016.
Professor Chakravartty presented the paper "Bachelor Builders and Gulf Dreams for Justice" at Other Citizens: Realignments of the People and the Political in the Long Twentieth Century Workshop Program, CSSSC, held in Kolkata, India in March 9-10, 2016.
Professor Chakravartty attended the workshop “New India’s World,” which was organized by the Centre of Global South Asian Studies, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, ssponsored by the Danish Council for Independent Research | Social Sciences (FSE), and held at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark, in April 2015.
Professor Chakravartty gave a talk, “Cool Capitalism and the Re-Making of Development in India,” at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, in April 2015.
Courses
2022 Winter
2022 Fall
First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Media, Democracy and the New Political
2021 Winter
2020 Spring
2020 Fall
2019 Summer
Media, Migration and Sanctuary
2019 Fall
First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Media, Democracy and the New Political
