Adam Burke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Education and the Co-Director of the Institute for Holistic Healing Studies. His research activities include cross-cultural studies of traditional medicine (in India and China), curricular innovation in the areas of holistic health, and inquiries into meditation and imagery. He has presented his work on meditation and hypnotic imagery to research audiences in India, and is the author of Self-Hypnosis Demystified (Crossing Press, 2004). He is also the co-chair of the Alternative and Complementary Health Practices Special Interest Group for the American Public Health Association (APHA).

Amita Shastri is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science. She is a comparativist  with research and teaching interests in democracy and democratization, ethnicity and nationalism, and political economy of development; especially with reference to South Asia and Sri Lanka . She teaches courses on South Asian politics, comparative politics and nationalism. (To read more click: http://bss.sfsu.edu/polisci/faculty_profiles/shastri.htm).

Bruce Avery research concerns are Indian writers and William Shakespear. He teaches "The Novel in India" and "Postcolonial Literature" in the English Department

Falu Bakrania is currently working on a book, “Re-Fusing Identities: The Cultural Politics of British Asian Music,” which analyzes South Asian youth culture in Britain in order to offer new ways of understanding diasporic identity.  Prevailing research often assumes that subcultures that “fuse” different forms of ethnic and national identity (i.e., in style or music) are expressing and celebrating bi-cultural identities, and at times, challenging forms of racism that cast particular identities (i.e., “British” and “Asian”) as mutually exclusive.  This book challenges these assumptions by considering how British Asian youth cultures, whose remixing of popular music has garnered much popular and scholarly attention, are not merely expressions of identity, but are social practices that construct identity and that are deeply shaped by, and shaping of, relations of power. She teaches courses on the South Asian Diaspora and directs the South Asian American Community Internship Program, which she established.

Humaira Mahi’s research interests are in the areas of International Business and Marketing. Her research in International Business focuses mainly on the effects of globalization on consumers and market structures in emerging markets. She is specifically interested in examining the evolving business environment in India vis-a-vis globalization. As part of her research on India she has been studying the dynamic Indian retail environment and has also been working on studying consumer attitudes to new global products in the Indian market. She currently teaches the undergraduate elective course “Emerging Business Issues in the Asia-Pacific Region.” She has also taught undergraduate courses in International Marketing and Marketing Strategy (To read more click here: http://cob.sfsu.edu/cob/directory/faculty_profile.cfm?facid=416)

Dr. Hermoso joined the School of Social Work faculty in the Fall of 2006 as assistant professor. She brings with her an extensive experience in international social development working on such issues as women’s role in peacemaking, social capital, civil society, local governance and socially-sustainable development, community-driven development, and communication rights in an information society. Before joining the faculty, Dr. Hermoso consulted for a number of non-governmental organizations, foundations, and multilateral organizations. Dr. Hermoso has taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses in international social development, community organization, social policy, planning, diversity, and research.

Kasturi Ray’s areas of interests include women and work; globalization and transnationality; immigration and diaspora studies; and colonial, postcolonial, and neo-colonial studies. She is currently at work on a book, The Trade in Maids: Cross-Cultural Readings of Paid and Unpaid Domestic Workers, which is a historical examination of women’s work in Hawai’I, Bengal, the Bay Area, and the Philippines. She is also working on a comparative social history of women workers on nineteenth-century sugar plantations in Hawai’I, Louisiana, and Trinidad and Tobago. Among the courses she teaches are: Cross Cultural Women's Literature & Cutlure and Women & Gender Studies.

Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi's research interests include South Asian traditions of dissent, India's intellectual and literary history, South Indian social history and Digital Humanities. He teaches undergraduate courses on Classical and Modern South Asian cultures, Delhi - biography of a City, Comparative Colonialism, Untouchability and Racism, and Images of Everyday Life. His graduate seminars have focused thus far on Vernacular Humanisms of South Asia and The theories of Civilization.

 

Santhi Kavuri-Bauer's research is concerned with looking at Indian historical monuments as spaces of social production. She is currently working on a book project that traces the history of the preservation and representation of Mughal monuments from their appearance as late-18th century ruins to their present status as World Heritage Sites. Her research shows how Indian monuments functioned, and still function, as dynamic spaces to order (and reorder) modern Indian society. Santhi Kavuri-Bauer teaches art history courses on South Asia, beginning with the Indus Valley culture of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and extending to the contemporary art scene.