Girl,
Uninterrupted
“We must be undone in order to do ourselves: we must be part of a larger social fabric of existence in order to create who we are.”
Judith Butler
This website is an introduction to my professional life but it is important to underline how that has been shaped by my personal and life experiences. Each section has an introduction as to why I chose to do what I do, and how it has culminated in my current life.
Born and brought up in a small town in India, I have traveled a long way from Dehra Dun to Bowling Green. I was slated to study engineering by rule of society but even as I finished high school, I knew I was interested in the society more than anything else. My interest in writing about simply anything and everything led me to do my undergrad in Journalism at Kamala Nehru College, Delhi University, which gave me experience not only as a journalist but also as a radio producer, as a filmmaker, and as an academic. I took all these experiences and honed them as I did my masters in Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Here, I was able to focus on all of these fields more deeply, but journalism and academia emerged the strongest. I was soon working with The Indian Express online, where I worked as a copy-editor and (sometimes) a reporter, fulfilling my lifelong dream of becoming a journalist. However, with the experience I built writing my masters thesis, I knew that academia would be my end goal. Thus, I applied for programs in the United States and settled on Bowling Green State University. I am now in the final stage of my PhD and cannot wait to be on the other end of the finish line.
It is imperative to mention that while being a woman and being a woman of color in the United States shapes a lot of my experiences, I come from a position of privilege being an upper caste and middle class background with immense support from my parents. This informs my research, and in no way do I claim to speak for those who are oppressed. My work highlights the problems of society while acknowledging that I have benefited from the same society. I still speak back to it and question it. I am not, as Butler puts it, "[replicating] uncritically relations of domination" but working in that power matrix which also affects me.
Outside of the classroom and workspace, I have also engaged in community engagement. In March 2019, I delivered a Tedx BGSU lecture called 'The Legitimacy of Online Feminist Activism'. I have also delivered lectures at the Bowling Green Elementary School and Bowling Green City School, pertaining to India and its cultural roots. I was also the president of the India Students Association at BGSU from 2018-2019.
When not researching or studying, I am found reading various fiction and non-fiction books, singing, and cooking. I have junior degree in vocal Indian classical music and have been a part of both, the Western Music Society of my college “Zephyr” and the college band “The Rumored Project”. I love to visit museums and zoos. All pictures used on the webiste are my own. The "Research" picture is from Anila Quayyam Agha’s exhibit “Between Light and Shadow” at the Toledo Museum of Art, 2019. The last picture on the homepage is Yayoi Kusama’s “Fireflies on the Water” at the Toledo Museum of Art, 2020.
Feel free to reach out to me via my email: tverma@albertus.edu or through Twitter.