Page 30 - The Indian EYE 050925

Newsmakers of the Week MAY 09, 2025 | The Indian Eye 30

RAJIV VINNAKOTA USHA IYER

Rutgers University confers Stanford University names new

honorary degree on entrepreneur head of its Center for South Asia

he Rutgers Board of Governors recently approved an honorary doctor tanford University has announced Usha Iyer as the new faculty direc-
of laws degree for Rajiv Vinnakota, a pioneering social entrepreneur. tor who will lead the Stanford University’s Center for South Asia for the
TVinnakota will be honored at the 259th anniversary commencement of S2025-26 academic year. Usha Iyer, is the associate professor of film and
Rutgers University on May 18, 2025. media studies in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.
Vinnakota has dedicated his life to initiatives that help Americans from Usha Iyer’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of cinema,
all walks of life become productive and engaged members of society. As pres- performance, and gender and sexuality studies, with a specific focus on Global
ident of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, he cultivates the talent, ideas, South cultural traffic along the vectors of race, gender, caste, and religion.
and networks that develop lifelong, effective citizens. Iyer is the author of Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal His-
tories of Hindi Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2020), which examines
Before joining the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, Vinnakota constructions of gender, stardom, sexuality, and spectacle in Hindi cinema
through women’s labor, collaborative networks, and gestural genealogies to
served as executive vice president of the Aspen Institute. In this produce a corporeal history of South Asian cultural modernities. The book
role, he launched and led the new Youth & Engagement Programs was awarded the British Association of South Asian Studies Book Prize, and
shortlisted for the Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research by the
division devoted to youth leadership development, civic engage- Dance Studies Association.
ment and opportunity. Iyer’s current book project, Jammin’: Black and Brown Media Intimacies
between India and the Caribbean (under contract with Columbia University
Press), studies the deep affective engagement of Caribbean spectators with
Early in his career, Vinnakota co-founded the SEED Foundation, the
nation’s first network of public, college-preparatory boarding schools for un- Indian cinema in relation to discourses of belonging and citizenship that have
developed around the histories of African enslavement and Indian indenture-
derserved children. Vinnakota won multiple awards for his work with SEED, ship in Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, and Guyana.
including Harvard University’s Innovation in American Government Award, Iyer is co-editing with Manishita Dass the volume, Shift Focus: Reframing
Fast Company/Monitor Group’s Social Capitalist Award, and Oprah Winfrey’s the Indian New Waves (under contract with Oxford University Press). This
Use Your Life Award. He continues to serve on SEED’s Board of Directors. anthology brings together a diverse group of scholars to examine the unex-
Vinnakota currently co-chairs the Civics and Civic Engagement Taskforce
for the United States Congress Semiquincentennial Commission celebrating plored cultural, political, and aesthetic genealogies, impulses, and resonances
of the Indian New Waves.
the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding. He also co-chairs the Civic Iyer’s essays have appeared in journals like Camera Obscura: Feminism,
Learning Pillar of the Partnership for American Democracy and serves on the Culture, and Media Studies, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Femi-
advisory committee for Citizen Data. nist Media Histories, South Asian Popular Culture, BioScope: South Asian
Vinnakota has been at the forefront of innovative scholarship and re-
search that has played a pivotal role in shaping the civic field. He has authored Screen Studies, as well as in anthologies and edited collections, including, The
Oxford Handbook of Film Theory, A Companion to Indian Cinema, Industri-
several publications and regularly appears on media outlets as an expert on al Networks and Cinemas of India, Figurations in Indian Film, among others.
civic learning and Gen Z. Iyer is Associate Editor of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.
The son of Indian immigrants, he grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and
graduated from Princeton University, where he received Princeton’s Wood-
row Wilson Award, the university’s highest honor for undergraduate alumni. To read more about Indian diaspora and Global Indians, log on to and follow
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, stands among America’s our website www.TheIndianEYE.com
highest-ranked, most diverse public research universities.

www.TheIndianEYE.com