Carnegie Mellon University

Deepa Nair

Deepa Nair

Assistant Teaching Professor, CMU Qatar

Bio

Deepa Nair is a historian of Modern South Asia. Her research revolves around politics, religion, education, and identity formation in modern India, and in particular the effect of ethno-religious nationalism on minorities and nation building in secular India. Before joining CMU-Q, she taught at the University of Central Florida and Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Nair’s teaching interests include history and culture of South Asia; imperialism, decolonization, nationalism in South Asia; politics, religion and gender in contemporary South Asia; legacies of the British raj– including Partition and rise of ethno-religious nationalism; globalization, migration and South Asian diaspora; Indian historiography and transnational history. She is currently working on the first edition of An Anthology of South Asia (Cognella /Routledge), and her monograph on education, state formation and politics of identity in South Asia.

Education

Ph.D.: National University of Singapore, 2007

Publications

  • Nair, Deepa. An Anthology of South Asia: From Pre-history to the Present. San Diego: Cognella Press/Routledge, December 2017.
  • Nair, Deepa. “The Other Side of Silence: Religion and Conflict in Indian Textbooks”. In Controversial History Education in Asian Contexts, eds. Mark Baildon, Kah Seng Loh, Ivy Maria Lim, Junaidah Jaffar & Gul Inanc, 58-74. New York: Routledge, 2014.
  • Nair, Deepa. “History, Politics and the State: The South Asian Experience”. Journal of North Carolina Association of Historians, Volume 18 (April 2010): 66-83.
  • Nair, Deepa. “Textbook Conflicts in South Asia: Politics of Memory and National Identity”. Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, Volume 2 (September 2010): 29- 45.
  • Nair, Deepa. ‘Contending “Historical” Identities in India.’ Contexts: The Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, Volume 1 (March 2009): 145-164.
  • Nair, Deepa. “Communal Stakes in the Indian Past”. Outré Terre: Teaching the Nation, French Quarterly Review of Geopolitics, No. 11. (Nov 2005): 343-351.

Courses Taught

  • 79104: South Asia - People, Processes, and Culture

Department Member Since: 2019