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Arko Dasgupta

Arko Dasgupta

PhD Student

  • Porter Hall 225C

Education

  • MPhil in International Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, 2016
  • M.A. in Conflict Analysis & Peace Building, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, 2013
  • B.A. in Economics, Political Science, Sociology, St Joseph's College, Bangalore, 2011

Arko Dasgupta is currently a doctoral fellow at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University

To read more about Arko Dasgupta, please visit his personal website.

Interest Area(s)

Modern Indian History; the British Empire; Intellectual History; Colonialism; Race; Modernity

Publications

  • “Kala Bagai: An Early Indian Woman in America,” India International Centre Quarterly 51, no. 1 (Summer 2024): 71-79.
  • Review Essay, Lal, Vinay. Insurgency and the Artist: The Art of the Freedom Struggle in India. New Delhi: Roli Books, 2022; Protest (Brill) 3, no.2 (2023): 291–295.
  • "Experiencing the Transimperial While Researching It: Three International Students' Journeys"; Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association with Vicky Shen and Eloy Romero Blanco (November 2023)
  • "Indian cinema's lens, and the classroom conversations it catalysed, put the term "Asian American" into sharper focus'; PublicSource (6 January)
  • "Makhan Singh: The Punjabi Radical Who Fought For Freedom in Not One But Two Countries," Scroll.in, January 2021
  • 'The Everydayness of Rural Bengal'; The Wire (January, 2019)

Awards and Fellowships

  • Graduate Small project Help (GuSH) Research Grant, Carnegie Mellon University, 2023
  • Departmental Grant for summer research, Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University, 2023
  • Junior/ Senior Research Fellow of the University Grants Commission in International and Area Studies, 2014-19
  • Kedia-Tayur Fellow (inaugural), 2023-2024
  • Prafulla C Mukerji Fellow, 2019 - ongoing

Research Assistance

Research Assistant on 'Crafting Democratic Futures,' a project funded by the A W Mellon Foundation aiming to document the African American experience with the ultimate goal of seeking reparative justice, 2021-2023

Presentations

  • "Reparations: an overview," Grand Challenge Seminar, Carnegie Mellon University, 2024
  • Organised 'Conversations on Caste' with Ketaki Jaywant, Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University, 2022
  • 'Rabindranath Tagore’s India: Notes on nativism, hospitality, and syncretism' at Department of Politics & Governance, Central University of Kashmir, Ganderbal, 2022
  • ‘Of Statues and Streets: Recovering the City’ at Urban History Association, Pittsburgh, October, 2023
  • “‘His Royal Vileness, King George’: Indian Anticolonialism in the United States” at Britain and the World, Duquesne University, April, 2023
  • ‘Interventionism to Indifference: the Epidemiological Experience of Indians and African Americans’ at The Pandemic Divide, Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity, Duke University, October, 2022
  • "Real Talk: Racism and Colourism in South Asia and Among South Asian Americans," Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Carnegie Mellon Univeristy, March 2022
  • "A Brief Introduction to Modern India, 1885-1947," City Charter High School, Pittsburgh, PA, January 2022
  • “The Indian Abroad: Gandhi’s Years in South Africa,” Bridges and Borders: Navigating Problems and Possibilities in Language and Culture, Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University, April 2021
  • “Why was Rabindranath Tagore Critical of Nationalism?” Rabindranath Tagore and his Creative Genius, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, April 2021
  • “Must Gandhi Fall? An Exploration of His Views on Race,” Subject Association of the Department of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, November 2021

Media Appearances

  • Rachel Ruff, "A Q&A with Doctoral Fellow Arko Dasgupta," The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, February 4, 2025. Link.
  • “Grandma to Many: Exploring the legacy of Kala Bagai, an early Indian woman in America,” Duke Research Blog. Link.        
  • “From There to Here,” Oral history project, Saturday Light Brigade Radio Productions (recorded at Winchester Thurston School, Pittsburgh). Link.                                                                                                       
  • “Casteism in India vs Racism in the US: a Comparative Approach,” Voices in Equity, a podcast hosted by the Samuel DuBois Cook Centre on Social Equity at Duke University, moderated by Dr. William “Sandy” Darity. Link.                                                                   
  • “Real Talk: Arko Dasgupta on the Indian Freedom Movement,” The Garden, a newsletter of Dietrich College, Carnegie Mellon University, Fall 2022. Link.  

Courses Taught

  • African American History, Race, and the Fight for Reparations in National and Transnational Perspective
  • Indian Cinema since 1947: Seeing the Nation on Screen
  • Global Histories (Teaching Assistant)

 

Advisor

Nico Slate