Gaiutra Bahadur

Gaiutra Bahadur is a journalist and author whose research project examines side-by-side the histories and longings of slavery's and indenture's descendants in both the United States and the West Indies. It also juxtaposes the stories of Guyanese immigrants to the United States and African American exiles in Guyana in the late 20th century. She earned her M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and B.A. in English literature from Yale University.

Publications:

• "Is Guyana’s Oil a Blessing or a Curse?" (2024, March 30). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/30/headway/is-guyanas-oil-a-blessing-or-a-curse.htm

• "Geopolitics, in First Person." (2024, July 22). Nieman Reports. https://niemanreports.org/geopolitics-in-first-person

• Essay: "Unmaking Asian Exceptionalism," The Boston Review 48, no. 3 (Summer 2023): 114-129

• Book Review: “Two Divergent Girlhoods in Ghana, United by the Same Debt,” The New York Times Book Review (review of Peace Adzo Medie’s novel Nightbloom), July 30, 2023.

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• Gender, Caste, Diaspora, Barnard Center for Research on Women, November 9, 2023

• First Saturdays Book Reading, The Brooklyn Museum, March 4, 2023

• Inaugural Ramesh and Leela Narain Lecture, The University of Cambridge, July 27, 2023

Previous Organizations: 

• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

• South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)

• The University of Cambridge

Accomplishments:

• Fellowship: Inaugural Ramesh and Leela Narain Fellow, The University of Cambridge (the first fellowship globally devoted to the study of indenture)

• Creation of an oral history archive on Guyanese immigrants in the United States for The South Asian American Digital Archive

• Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (University of Chicago Press, 2013)

Upcoming Projects:

• In final editing for a magazine story I've reported about the impact of the discovery of oil on Guyana's economy, environment and democracy

• In final editing of a student magazine covering arts for social justice in Newark and on the Rutgers-Newark campus

• At work on a book project examining the interconnected histories and intertwined lives of African and Asian diasporas in the Caribbean and the United States

As a writer of creative nonfiction, a journalist, and a humanities scholar, I tell the stories of migrants. My goals are to humanize them and to place them in a global historical and political context, in the afterlives of indenture, slavery, colonialism, and the Cold War.

Rutgers University – Newark was awarded a grant by the Mellon Foundation to organize a Sawyer Seminar Series titled Potentialities of Justice: Toward Collective Reparative Futures. The Sawyer Seminar, led by ISGRJ-Newark Campus Director Mayte Green-Mercado, co-organized by Lauren Shallish (Urban Education), and hosted at Rutgers-Newark during the 2024-2025 academic year, will explore themes of social justice centering on four critical areas of inquiry: systemic racism, environmental crisis and climate change, disability, human displacement and post-conflict resolution, to illuminate common histories and methodological frameworks that can inform generative responses to past and present social harms. Each area of focus reflects not only the scholarly interests of our faculty, but also the institutional commitments of Rutgers University- Newark as an anchor institution devoting its resources to serve our community.

https://globalracialjustice.rutgers.edu/news/sawyer-seminar-series