Interim Associate Director of Graduate Studies

Devika Chawla

Associate Professor

School of Communication Studies, 031 Lasher Hall

Ohio University

Athens, OH 45701

740.591.5733;

EDUCATION

Ph.D.2004Purdue University, Department of Communication Dissertation: Arranged Selves: Role, Identity, and Social

Transformations among Indian Women in Hindu Arranged Marriages

Emphasis: Narrative Theories, Family Studies, Socio-cultural

Anthropology (Interpersonal and Family Communication)

M.A. 2000Central Michigan University, Department of Speech Communication

and Dramatic Arts

Thesis: Reconstructing Gender Identities through Communication: A

Case Study of Asian Indian Female Graduate Students

Post 1995Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi,

Graduate Department of English Journalism

Diploma

(M.A.)

B.A. 1994University of Delhi, New Delhi, Department of English

(Honors)Major: English Literature and Literary Criticism

Minor/s: History and Political Science

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

2010-PresentAssociate Professor (with tenure)

School of Communication Studies, Ohio University

Affiliated Faculty:

School of Interdisciplinary Arts, College of Fine Arts, Ohio University, 2008-Present
Women’s and Gender Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, Ohio University, 2007-Present
International Development Studies, Ohio University, 2009-Present
Southeast Asian Studies, Ohio University, 2009-Present
Communication and Development Studies, Ohio University, 2010-present

Visiting Graduate Faculty:

Communication Graduate Program, Bangkok University, Spring 2008, 2011 (Bangkok University-Ohio University Doctoral Program in Communication Studies)

2004-2010Assistant Professor (tenure-track), School of Communication Studies, Ohio University

2000-2004Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Communication, Purdue University

1999-2000Graduate Research Assistant & Instructor, Minority Student Services and Native American Programs, Central Michigan University

1997-1998Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Speech Communication and Dramatic Arts, Central Michigan University

ADMINISTRATIVE APPOINTMENTS

2014-2015Associate Director for Graduate Studies (Interim),

School of Communication Studies, Ohio University

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

Narrative and Performance Theory; Mobility Studies; Postcolonial and Transnational Studies; Ethnographic Analysis

LANGUAGE SKILLS

English, Hindi, Punjabi (speaking, reading, writing fluency); Spanish (in-process)

GRANTS, AWARDS, HONORS

(Research and Teaching)

Outstanding Graduate Faculty Teacher Award, School of Communication Studies, Ohio University, 2013-2014.
Article of the Year Award for “Postcoloniality and the Speaking Body: Revisioning the Oral English Competency Curriculum,” awarded by the African American Communication and Culture Division, National Communication Association, New Orleans, November 2011.
Ohio University Faculty Fellowship Leave (2011-2012) for completing book manuscript, Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition
Nominated Presenter, “Performing Home/Storying Selves: Home and/as Identity in Histories of Refugees in India’s Partition.” Invited as one of ten scholars to present research at a specialized mini-conference/workshop entitled, “Landscaping Identity Research in Intercultural Communication,” Department of Communication, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL (April 2011).
Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentor Award, School of Communication Studies, Ohio University, 2009-2010.
Top Paper, “Narrating Peace in Family Stories: Stability and Change in the Oral Histories of Hindu Refugees in India’s Partition,” Ethnography Division, National Communication Association, Chicago IL, November 2009.
Ohio University Research Council Grant, “Family Identity and India’s Partition: A Cross-generational Study,” competitively awarded by the Office of Research Programs at Ohio University, Athens, OH (Award amount for 2009= $ 7080)
Provost’s Summer Award for Research and Creative Activity, “Family Identity and India’s Partition: A Cross-generational Study,” competitively awarded to one recipient in the Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University, Athens, OH. Summer 2008 (Summer Award amount=$4000)
Top Paper, “The First Disciple: A Generative Autobiographical Performance from an Ethnographic Field.” Ethnography Division, National Communication Association, Chicago, November 2007.
Top Paper, “Between Stories and Theories: Embodiments, Disembodiments, and Other Struggles.” Performance Studies Division, National Communication Association, Boston, November, 2005
OSCLG Cherie Kramarae Outstanding Dissertation Award for outstanding dissertation in the area of language, gender, and communication submitted and completed between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2004, Awarded by the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender, Reno, Nevada, October 2005.
Purdue University Graduate Student Award for Outstanding Teaching, Committee on the Education of Teaching Assistants and the Office of the Provost for Academic Affairs, Purdue University, 2004.
Alan H. Monroe Scholar, Department of Communication, Purdue University, 2003.
Bruce Kendall Award for Excellence in Teaching (Honorable Mention), Department of Communication, Purdue University, 2003.
Purdue Research Foundation Summer Grant Award. “Arranged Selves: Role, Identity and Social Transformations Among Indian Women in Hindu Arranged Marriages.” Purdue University Research Foundation Summer Grant, 2003. ($ 4,200)
Certificate of Recognition for Teaching Excellence (Interpersonal Communication). Presented by the Chairperson of the Department of Communication, Purdue University, Spring 2001.
Grant Co-Writer Michigan College University Partnership Program (MiCUP) grant for the academic year 2000-2001. (Grant Award: $ 25,288). Principal Investigator: R. Todd Williamson, Associate Director, Native American Programs, Central Michigan University. (funded)
Certificate of Excellence presented at the Student Research and Creative Endeavors Exhibition for, “X-Files: A Feminist and Gender Studies Analysis.” Central Michigan University, 1999.

PUBLICATIONS

Books

Monograph

Chawla, D. (2014). Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition. New York: Fordham

University Press.

(Oxford University Press Global listing in Socio-cultural Anthropology)

Edited Book

Chawla, D., & Holman Jones, S. (Eds). Storying Home: Place, Identity, and Exile. (contracted

with Lexington Books [Communication and Geography; forthcoming 2015])

Co-authored Books

Chawla, D., & Rodriguez, A. (2011). Liminal Traces: Storying, Performing, and

Embodying Postcoloniality. Boston, MA: Sense Publishing. (Series—Transgressions:

Cultural Studies and Education)

Rodriguez, A., & Chawla, D. (2010). Intercultural Communication: An Ecological

Approach. Minneapolis, MN: Kendall Hunt.

Essays

Peer-reviewed& Invited

Chawla, D. (2014). Habit, Home, Threshold. Departures in Critical Qualitative

Research, 3 (2), 152-161.

Chawla, D., Anderson, M. (2014). Destabilizing Comfort Zones. In J. Deeley and L. G.

Sbrocchi (Eds.), Semiotic Yearbook (pp. xx-xx ), Ontario, Canada: Legas Publishing.

Chawla, D. (in press). Remaking Hindu Arranged Marriage in the Narrative

Performances of Urban Indian Women (pp. xx-xx). In Leslie A. Baxter (Ed.). Remaking

‘Family’ Communicatively. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Rodriguez, A. & Chawla, D. (2014) Family Communication in Postcolonial

Discourse. In Rae Lynn Schwartz-Dupre (Ed.). Communicating Colonialism: Readings

on Postcolonial Theory(s) andCommunication(pp.210-227). New York: Peter Lang

Publishing.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2013). Antagonistic Habits of Researching and

Reporting. In J. Deeley and L. G. Sbrocchi (Eds.), Semiotics 2012

(pp. 105-110), Ontario, Canada: Legas Publishing.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2013). Habits of Home Abroad. In J. Deeley and L. G. Sbrocchi

(Eds.), Semiotics 2012 (pp.69-76), Ontario, Canada: Legas Publishing.

Chawla, D. (2013). Walk, walking, talking home. In S. Holman-Jones, T. Adams, & C. Ellis

(Eds.) Handbook of Autoethnography, (pp. 162-172). Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek,

CA.

Chawla, D. (2012). Performing Home/Storying Selves: Home and/as Identity in

Oral Histories of India’s Partition. In N. Bardhan & M. Orbe (Eds.) Identity Research in

Intercultural Communication (pp. 87-100). Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield).

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2012). Reverberating voices: The indulgences of

metaloguing. In J. Deeley and L. G. Sbrocchi (Eds.), Semiotics 2011 (pp. 227-

234), Ontario, Canada: Legas Publishing.

Chawla, D. (2011). Between solids/Monologues in Brown: A Mystory Performance.

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 11(5), 47-58.

Chawla, D., & Rodriguez, A. (2011) Postcoloniality and the Speaking Body:

Revisioning the English Oral Competency Curriculum. Cultural Studies

Critical Methodologies, 11(1), 76-91.

(Article of the Year Award-African American Communication and Culture Division, NCA)

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2011). Stories at the memory-imagination interface. In J. Deeley

and L. G. Sbrocchi (Eds.), Semiotics 2010 (pp. 229-237), Ontario, Canada: Legas

Publishing.

Chawla, D. (2010). Transworld identity. In R. Jackson (Ed.), Encyclopedia of

Identity (pp. 844-846). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2010). (Re-)inventing, (re-) cycling, (re-) inforcing

memories in auto (biography). In K. Haworth, J. Hogue, and L.G. Sbrocchi, Semiotics

2009 (pp. 590-597). Ottawa: Legas

Chawla, D. & Anderson, M. (2009). Recycling nonevolutionary living into linear

Developmental lives. In J. Deeley (Ed.), Semiotics 2008 (pp. 156-162). Ontario, Canada:

Legas Publishing.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2009). Exploring semiosic tensions between autobiography,

biography, ethnography, and autoethnography. In T. J.Prewitt & W. Morgan (Eds.),

Semotics 2007 (pp.1-9). Ontario, Canada: Legas Publishing.

Chawla, D.,* & Anderson, M. (2009). Collaborative excavations of the semiotic self in

ethnography, autobiography, and biography. In B. Smith & T. J. Prewitt (Eds.) Semiotics

2006 (pp. 123-133). Ottawa: Legas Publishing.

Rodriguez, A., & and Chawla, D. (2008). Locating diversity in communication studies.

International and Intercultural Communication Annual XXXI , 31 (3), 33-58. (To be released in 2009).

Chawla, D. (2008). Holy Summer: A Field Story. Cultural Studies  Critical Methodologies,

8 (4), 546-557.

Chawla, D. (2008). The writerly reader in memoir: Inter/Subjectivity and Joan Didion’s, The

Year of Magical Thinking. Review of Communication, 8 (4), 377-394.

Chawla, D. (2008). Poetic arrivals and departures: Bodying the ethnographic field in verse.

ForumQualitativeSozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9 (2), Art. 24.

Chawla, D.,* & Rodriguez, A. (2008). Narratives on longing, being, and knowing:

Envisioning a writing epistemology. International Journal of Progressive Education, 4 (1) (leadarticle).

Chawla, D. (2008). Enacting Conflict as Resistance: Urban Indian Women in Hindu Arranged

Marriages. In Lorin B. Arnold (Ed.), Family Communication: Theory and Research (pp.

228-236). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Chawla, D. (2007). The First Disciple: A generative autobiographical performance from an

ethnographic field. Cultural Studies  Critical Methodologies, 7(4), 357-377.

Chawla, D.,* & Rodriguez, A. (2007). New imaginations of difference: On teaching,

writing, and culturing.” Teaching in Higher Education, 12 (5/6), 695-706.

Specialissue: Diversity and Commonality in Higher Education

Chawla, D. (2007). I will speakout: Narratives of resistance in contemporary Indian

women’s discourses in Hindu arranged marriages. Women and Language, 30 (1), 5-19.

Chawla, D. (2007). Between stories and theories: Embodiments, disembodiments, and Other

Struggles. Storytelling, Self, Society, 3 (1), 16-30. Partial focus of issue: Colonial and

postcolonial storytelling.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2007). Autobiography meets biography: Semiotic

expansions and contractions. In T. J. Prewitt, K. Haworth, & J. Deeley (Eds.), Semiotics 2005 (pp. 1-14). Ottawa: Legas Publishing.

Chawla, D. (2006).Subjectivity and the “native” ethnographer: Researcher eligibility in an

ethnographic study of urban Indian women in Hindu arranged marriages. International

Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5(4).

Chawla, D. (2006). The Bangle Seller of Meena Bazaar. Qualitative Inquiry 12 (6), 1135-1138.

Chawla, D. (2005). Two Journeys. In M. David (Ed.), Case study research, Volume II, Part 2

(pp.371-392). London: UK.

(This essay was competitively nominated and chosen to be included in the Sage series,

“Benchmarks in Social Research Methods”)

Chawla, D.,* & Rawlins, W. K. (2004). Enabling Reflexivity in a Mentoring Relationship,

Qualitative Inquiry, 10 (6), 963-978.

Chawla, D. (2003). Two Journeys. Qualitative Inquiry 9(5), 785-804.

Chawla, D. (2003). Rhythms of Dislocation: Family history, ethnographic spaces and

reflexivity. In R. P. Clair (Ed.), Expressions of ethnography (pp. 271-279). Albany, NY:

SUNY Press.

Chawla, D., & Rodriguez, A. (2001). Emancipatory Pedagogy as Insurgency. Radical

Pedagogy, 3 (2). (LeadArticle)

Book Reviews

Khan, Shahnaz. Zina, Transnational feminism, and the moral regulation of Pakistani women.

In Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal, 33 (1), 331-332, 2008.

Straight, Bilinda. Women on the verge of home. In Women and Language, 29 (2), 54-55, 2006.

RESEARCH & WRITING IN-PROGRESS

Chawla, D. (in-progress). Tracing Home’s Habits.Storying Home.

Chawla, D. & Stacy Holman Jones. Introduction. Storying Home.

Holman Jones, S., & Chawla, D.Closures. Storying Home.

Preparation (invited and accepted) of three entries for the International Communication Association’s InternationalEncyclopedia of Communication; Sub-Disciplinary Encyclopedia of Communication (Communication Research Methods:Qualitative Research Methods), to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2016.

Ethnography/ethnographic methods (4000-5000 words)
Performance studies (4000-5000 words)
Oral and life history interviewing (500-1000 words)

Preparation (invited & accepted) of one entry for the International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication.

Othering and Otherness(4000 words)

Chawla, D., & Rodriguez, A. Repositioning Race in Communication Studies: The

Unbearable Whiteness of Being.

Chawla, D. The Republic of Indignity: Notes from a Dented and PaintedDelhi

Émigré.

Nascent thinking and research about a field-project: Travel and Empire.

PARTICIPATION IN ACADEMIC MEETINGS

Papers

Chawla, D. & Anderson, M. (2014, May). Recovering Voice in Ethnography. Paper Presented at

the 10th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

Chawla, D. (2014, May). Tracing Home’s Habits. Paper presented at the 10th International

Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D. (2013, November). Fieldwork, Homework, and Family Stories. Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association,

Washington D.C.

Chawla, D. (2013, November). Family Communication in Postcolonial Discourse. Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association,

Washington D.C.

Chawla, D. & Anderson, M. (2013, October). Familiar Interlocutors, Unstable Comfort-Zones.

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of American, Dayton, OH.

Chawla, D. (2013, May). Fieldwork, Homework, and my Retired Father: Informant, Interferer,

Interlocutor. Paper presented at the Ninth International Congress of Qualitative

Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D. (2013, May). Women Speaking Un/Homely Homes. Paper presented at the

NinthInternational Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D. (2013, May). Walk, Walking, Talking Home. Paper presented at the

at the Ninth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL. (Spotlight

Session)

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2013, May). Destabilizing Collaborative Comfort Zones. Paper

presented at the Ninth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2012, November). Antagonistic Habits of Researching and

Reporting. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America,

Toronto, Canada.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D.(2012, November). Habits of Home Abroad. Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, Toronto, Canada.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2012, May). The Insult of Formulaic Ethnography.Paper

presented at International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2012, April). Encountering Ethnography. Paper presented at the

annual meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society, Toledo, OH.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2011, October). Reverberating voices: The indulgences of

metaloguing. Paper Presented at the annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of

America, Pittsburgh, PA.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2011, May). Metalogue as Method and Madness. Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry,

Urbana, IL.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2011, April). Mindprints: Being, becoming, and unbecoming

data.Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Central States Anthropological

Association, Milwaukee, WI.

Chawla, D. (2011, April). Performing Home/Storying Selves: Home and/as Identity in Histories

of Refugees in India’s Partition. Paper presented at—Landscaping Identity Research in

Intercultural Communication, Department of Communication, Southern Illinois

University, Carbondale, IL.

Chawla, D. (2010, November). Between solids/monologues in brown: A mystory

performance.Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication

Association, San Francisco, CA.

Chawla, D. (2010, November). Can there be a postcolonial ethnography? Paper presented

at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, San Francisco, CA.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2010, October). Stories at the memory-imagination-interface.

Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Semiotic Society of America,

Louisville, KY.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2010, May). Inquiring into an ethics of memory and disclosure.

Paper presented at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D. (2010, May). Between solids: Monologues in brown. Paper presented at the

International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2010, April). Translating living to an experience to a life. Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society, Madison,

Wisconsin.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2009, September). (Re-)inventing , (re-) cycling, (re-) inforcing

memories in auto (biography). Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Semiotic

Society of America, Cincinnati, OH

Chawla, D. (2009, November). Narrating peace in family stories: Stability and change in the

oral histories of Hindu refugees in India’s partition. Paper presented at the

meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL. (Top Four Paper—

Ethnography Division)

Chawla, D. (2009, May). Framing anti-gay rhetoric as neo-colonial discourse. Paper presented

at the Fifth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D. (2009, May). My father, my interlocutor: Finding family history in Other

narratives.Paper presented at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana,

IL.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2009, May). Mutual metaloguing: (Auto) biography as discovery

and invention. Paper presented at the Fifth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry,

Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2009, April). Paths not taken, cascades aborted, and the residual

life. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Central States Anthropological

Society, Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D. (2008, November). Unconventional poetic arrivals and departures: Bodying the

ethnographic field in verse. Paper to be presented at the meeting of the National

Communication Association, San Diego, CA.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2008, October). Nonlinear evolutionary living, linear

developmental lives. Paper presented at the meeting of the Semiotic Society of America,

Houston, TX,

Chawla, D. (2008, July). ‘Making peace’ in everyday family narratives: A cross-generational

oral history study of India’s partition. Paper presented at the meeting of the International

Peace Research Council, Leauven, Belgium.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2008, May). Taming a life, domesticating a biography. Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the Fourth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2008, March). Lives as semiosic containers and connectors.

Paper presented at the meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society,

Indianapolis, IN.

Chawla, D. (2007, November). The First Disciple: A Generative Autobiographical

Performance from an Ethnographic Field. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL. (Top Paper—Ethnography Division)

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2007, October). Tensions constituting the relationships between

ethnographer and ethnographic contexts, between autobiography and biography and

between ethnographer-autobiographer and biographer: Pursuing a collaborative

mentor-mentee project. Paper presented at the meeting of the Semiotic Society of

America, New Orleans, LA.

Chawla, D. (2007, May). Performance or theory? Ethnographic re/solutions and dilemmas.

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Third International Congress of

QualitativeInquiry, Urbana-Champaign, IL.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2007, May). Between ethnography and autobiography: The

gift of tensions. Paper presented at the meeting of the Third International Congress of

Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana-Champaign, IL.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2007, April). Ethnogging and being ethnogged through the

looking glass. Paper presented at the meeting of the Central States Anthropological

Society, Minneapolis, MN.

Chawla, D. (2006, November). The reading self in memoir: Inter/subjectivity and Joan Didion’s

The Year of Magical Thinking. Presented at the annual meeting of the National

Communication Association, San Antonio, TX.

Chawla, D. (2006, November). I will speakout: Narrative adjustment as resistance in

contemporary Indian women’s discourses in Hindu arranged marriages.” Presented at

meeting of the National Communication Association, San Antonio, TX.

Chawla, D., & Anderson, M. (2006, September). Collaborative excavations of the semiotic

self in ethnography, autobiography, and biography. Paper presented at the meeting of

the Semiotic Society of America, West Lafayette, IN.

Anderson, M., & Chawla, D. (2006, April). Rewriting lives: A mentor mentee project. Paper

presented at the meeting of the Central States Anthropological Association, Omaha, Nebraska.

Anderson, M., &Chawla, D. (2006, February). Mentor, mentee metalogue. Paper presented

at the meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society, Pensacola, FL.