WSSU Hosts Lecture on Public Space and Political Protest in Indian
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Lisa Mitchell, associate professor of anthropology and history in the
Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, will lecture on "Public
Space and Political Protest in the History of Indian Democracy” on Thursday, September 19, at 2
p.m. in Room 228 of the Hall-Patterson Building on the campus of Winston-Salem State
University (WSSU).
The presentation, which is free and open to the public, will focus mainly on the use of public
space for protests by linguistic minorities in cities in southern India as they struggle to resist the
imposition of Hindi as the national language. It is based on Mitchell’s long-term and current
research on public space and political protest in Indian history and everyday practices, Indian
languages and linguistic politics.
Mitchell is the author of “Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a
Mother Tongue,” which was awarded the Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian
Humanities by the American Institute of Indian Studies. She is currently finishing a book on the
role of public space in the history of Indian democracy, and has begun research on a new
project on the sociocultural history and politics of cement in India.
In addition to teaching, Mitchell is also the director of the University of Pennsylvania's South
Asia Center. She previously had taught at the University of Notre Dame and Bowdoin College
and was also a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington. Mitchell received her Ph.D.
and master’s degree in sociocultural anthropology at Columbia University, a master’s degree in
sociolinguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, and her undergraduate
degree in government and third world studies at Oberlin College.
Mitchell will be a visiting scholar at WSSU for two days as part of a National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH) funded project on integrating India into the liberal arts curriculum. In
addition to her public lecture, Mitchell will also conduct a workshop for WSSU faculty on
“"Language, Ethnicity, Caste and Politics in South India."