THE HARRON FAMILY ENDOWED CHAIR IN COMMUNICATION
Raka Shome, PhD
Raka Shome, PhD, is the The Harron Family Endowed Chair, and Professor of Communication. She writes on postcolonial cultures, transnational feminism and nationalism as they intersect with media/communication cultures. Her writings are informed by theoretical orientations in cultural studies, postcolonial studies and transnational feminism. Her current research interests are in Asian (and non-western) Modernities, Contemporary Indian (Hindu) Nationalism and Gender; the Global South; Transnational Politics of Knowledge Production as a Communication issue.
She is the author of Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2014)鈥攁 book that adopts a transnational feminist approach to examine how new sets of postcolonial relations in contemporary North Atlantic Western cultures are mediated through bodies of white femininity while also being linked to erasures of women from the Global South. The book has been reviewed in many outlets such as but not only Times Literary Supplement; Journal of Communication, New Formations, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and she was interviewed on a radio show of Australian Broadcasting Corporation about this book. Dr. Shome is currently writing a book on the Clean India Movement and Contemporary Hindu Nationalism.
In her career, she has delivered several keynotes, plenary and endowed talks nationally and internationally. A few recent examples include the Aubrey Fisher Lecture at the University of Utah; The Giles Gray Lecture at Louisiana State University; the International Rhetoric Conference at Ghent University; 15th Anniversary of Global Media Program at London School of Economics and Political Science; Gender, Mobility and Asia Conference at University of Melbourne, the first ever conference on Whiteness in Sweden at the Multicultural Centre in Botkyrka, Sweden; and the German Communication Association, International Communication Section conference at University of Erfut.
Dr. Shome has received several awards for her research, including the 2020 Distinguished Scholar Award from Rhetoric and Communication Theory of National Communication Association; the 2017 National Communication Association (NCA) Woolbert Award鈥攇iven to a published article that has stood the test of time and become an anchor for new conceptualizations in the field of communication鈥攖he 2016 Distinguished Scholar Award from the NCA Cultural Studies Division; the 2000 NCA Karl Wallace Memorial Award from National Communication Association; two Outstanding Article Awards from the NCA Cultural Studies Division; Distinguished Scholarship Award from International and Intercultural Division of National Communication Association; and the National Communication Association鈥檚 Rhetoric and Communication Theory Division鈥檚 New Investigator Award.
About the Harron Family Endowed Chair in Communication
The Harron Family Endowed Chair in Communication honors the Harron family's accomplishments in the field of communication, their philanthropic legacy and the Department's commitment to excellence in communication education, scholarship and practice.