Carnegie Mellon University

Joe Trotter

Joe William Trotter Jr.

Director and Founder, CAUSE

  • Baker Hall 246C
  • 412-268-2875
Address
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Bio

Joe William Trotter, Jr. is Giant Eagle Professor of History and Social Justice and past History Department Chair at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also the Director and Founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE). Professor Trotter received his BA degree from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. 

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Avinash Hingorani

Avinash Hingorani

Postdoctoral Fellow, CAUSE

  • Baker Hall 246C
Address
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Bio

Avinash Hingorani is a transnational historian who provides an innovative and valuable approach to analyzing the legacies of White Supremacy and Colonialism, with emphasis on a global and comparative perspective. His research focuses on the intersection of caste and race in India and the racialized experiences of Black Americans in the United States to understand how we can relationally theorize intersections of race and caste across the two contexts.

Avinash has recently signed a book contract with Cambridge University Press to publish his first academic book titled, A Clash of Color: Dialogues on Race, Caste, and Solidarity in the United States and India 1900-1954. His book is currently in the production stage and is expected to be published before the end of 2024. It explores the cultural and political connections between India and the United States, focusing on a small select group of Indians and Americans and their ideas on race and caste, and the solidarity they built with one another in their fight against White Supremacy and Colonialism.

Avinash’s next goal is to start a new research project that translates his historical findings to the more recent past and explores the persistence of “criminal castes” in the United States and India during the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. He will begin working on this project in the Spring of 2024 with the goal of eventually producing a second book on this topic.

 Prior to his appointment at Carnegie Mellon University, Avinash was a Visiting Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the College of Charleston. His courses analyzed how social constructions are produced historically and reproduced in contemporary contexts and various forms of cultural representation – literature, film and others. They accentuated the struggles of marginalized peoples and their allies against forces such as racism, sexism, classism or heterosexism to attain equitable outcomes at both the local and international level. Avinash also served as a guest lecturer at Dartmouth in January 2022.

 Avinash graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Ph.D. in History in July 2022. He passed his defense without corrections, a distinction achieved by approximately five percent of successful Ph.D. students in the United Kingdom.

 Avinash has studied in multiple countries, including the United States, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom and he credits this to his transnational approach to history-writing. Additionally, Indian heritage, and experience of living in India, conducting archival work there, and conversing with Indians from all religions and social backgrounds has given Avinash a perspective that is not shared by many Americans. His career in transnational history is thus an attempt to connect the unique histories of both India and the United States. His grandfather, Lakhan H. Massand, was an activist and a freedom fighter during British rule in India. According to Avinash, he had an idealistic vision of a free and secular India where there was no oppression, and everyone was equal. To achieve this lofty goal, he was willing to make supreme sacrifices and even withstand the tortures of imprisonment. In fact, when India finally achieved independence in 1947, his grandfather was in jail and was released only in 1948.

 Avinash is actively engaged in building an academic career which further disseminates the realities of the lived experiences of low-caste Indians and Black Americans. It is his ambition that his work should contribute towards the social advancement of both racial minorities in the United States and low-caste Indians in India.