An Anthropologist by training, Dr. Linta Varghese is Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College CUNY, and faculty in the Public Scholarship Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She teaches courses in Asian American and Asian diaspora studies. Her current research investigates the cross-class and solidarity organizing in the US domestic workers movement through the universalization of care. This project continues her work examining domestic work and emerges through her past engagement with South Asian American domestic worker organizing.
Social Justice and Public Scholarship (PUBL 70200) introduces students to the myriad ways in which public scholarship and social justice intersect. Interdisciplinary by design, students are introduced to the work of scholars, artists, and activists who are committed to the vision of a more just world through their community-engaged, and/or public-facing work. The course is one of two required courses for the Public Scholarship Certificate Program.
In Spring 2027, the course will introduce students to the intersections of public scholarship and social justice through the lens of Asian communities in New York City, with particular attention to labor organizing and working-class Asian communities. Case studies may include oral histories and art installations from Red Canary Song, participatory action research surveys used by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, and art projection and ‘placekeeping’ mapping used by Chinatown Art Brigade. A central concern of the course will be the role of community documentation — from the mundane recounting of work tasks to the creation of worker education programs to the narratives formed through oral histories — to labor struggles in general. By the end of the course, students will learn how to design and put into practice the framework for a successful public-facing, and/ or community-engaged research project.
Dr. Linta Varghese’s work has appeared in journals such as Cultural Dynamics, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Ethnic Studies Review and CUNY Forum, and in edited volumes including The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power. Prior to joining the faculty at BMCC, CUNY, Varghese was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at Vassar College, and an adjunct at Hunter College, Eugene Lang at The New School, and Columbia University. She co-established the Contingent Faculty Caucus of the Association of Asian American Studies. Since 2020, she has served as the coordinator of the BMCC-Hunter College AANAPISI Bridge Initiative, a Department of Education Minority Serving Institution grant, and serves as board chair at AAARI.
