My conversation with Nico Slate began with him reflecting on his own path into the study of historical connections between South Asia and the United States. We then moved to a wide-ranging discussion covering the importance of the transnational scale for an understanding of antiracist and anticaste politics, the repurposing of ‘race’ and ‘caste’ through creative acts of transnational translation, the interplay between the race-colony and race-caste analogies in solidaristic politics across the late 19th and 20th centuries, and the conjunctural factors that have shaped the rise and fall of race-caste scholarship.

Guest bio:

Nico Slate, Professor of History. Carnegie Mellon University.

References:

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: Indian social reformer, nationalist, feminist, and socialist who promoted handicrafts, handlooms, and theatre.

W.E.B. Du Bois: American sociologist, historian, and Pan-Africanist who authored some of the most consequential works on the global color line and racial capitalism.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political thinker who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule.

Daniel Immerwahr, “Caste or Colony? Indianizing Race in the United States” (2007)

Oliver Cox: Trinidadian sociologist of race relations.

B.R. Ambedkar: Indian jurist and anticaste thinker who chaired the committee that drafted the Indian Constitution and served as the independent India’s first Minister of Law.

Lala Lajpat Rai: Indian revolutionary, politician, and author.

Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020)

W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess (1928).

Katherine Mayo, Mother India (1927).

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