Andrew Parayil Boge is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication studies with a concentration in Rhetoric, Culture, Engagement and the Graduate Research Assistant for Humanities for the Public Good. He studies rhetorics of race/racism and specializes in South Asian American racialization. His dissertation examines how brownness emerges in the early twentieth century as a rhetorical rubric for race-making to discipline South Asian Indians as subordinate racial subjects within the prevailing white supremacist racial order in the United States. Tracing the emergence of anti-brownness as a distinct mode of racialization highlights brownness as a discursive tool of power, not just a vexed identity marker. The project aims to uncover the discursive processes that underwrite the stabilization of racial hierarchies.

The principles of the public humanities is central to Andrew’s pedagogical and scholarly praxis. He has worked with the African American Museum of Iowa, Humanities Without Walls Consortium, and Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio on applied humanities projects. Andrew is excited to continue collaborating with the Obermann Center and Humanities for the Public Good Program.