Chaise LaDousa
Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Anthropology; Director of Education Studies
Chaise LaDousa has conducted field research in North India studying languages and the role they play in education and India’s rapidly changing political economy. Another project has focused on the importance of fun in expressive culture in institutions of higher education in the United States. In addition to publishing numerous professional articles, he is the author of Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language and Social Class in Contemporary India, published in 2014, and Signs of Play: Faith, Race, and Sex in a College Town, published in 2011. He attended the college of the University of Chicago and received his doctorate from Syracuse University.
Recent Courses Taught
Cultural Anthropology
Digital Technology and Social Transformation
Ethnography of Literacy and Visual Language
Seminar in Linguistic Semiotics
Research Interests
Linguistic anthropology, anthropology of institutions, nationalism, anthropology of education, political economy, gender, visual language, India, United States
Distinctions
- Dean’s Scholarly Achievement Award, Notable Year Achievement, 2012
- Class of 1966 Career Development Award, 2010
- Faculty research grant, Southern Connecticut State University, 2004, 2005, 2006
- Faculty development grant, Southern Connecticut State University, 2004, 2005, 2006
- Curriculum development grant, Southern Connecticut State University, 2004
- Dissertation prize, graduate school, Syracuse University, 2000
- Teaching associate, Future Professoriate Program, Syracuse University, 1998
- University dissertation fellowship, Syracuse University, 1997-1998
- National Science Foundation grant no. SBR-9629784 to undertake field research, 1996-1997
Selected Publications
- Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014
- House Signs and Collegiate Fun: Sex, Race, and Faith in a College Town. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011
- “Everyone’s Got Room to Grow”: A Discourse Analysis of the Rhetoric of Service Learning in Higher Education. Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences 6(2):pp tbd, 2013
- “Language Management/Labor,” with Bonnie Urciuoli, Annual Review of Anthropology 42:175-90, 2013
- “On Mother and Other Tongues: Sociolinguistics, Schools, and Language Ideology in Northern India. Language Sciences 32(6):602-14, 2010
- “Of Nation and State: Language, School, and the Reproduction of Disparity in a North Indian City.” Anthropological Quarterly 80(4):925-60, 2007
- “Witty House Name”: Visual Language, Interpretive Practice, and Uneven Agency in a Midwestern College Town.” Journal of American Folklore 120(478):445-81, 2007
- “Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization, and Indian Schooling: An Interview with Krishna Kumar.” Globalisation, Societies, and Education 5(2):137-52, 2007
- “The Discursive Malleability of an Identity: A Dialogic Approach to Language “Medium” Schooling in North India.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16(1):36-57, 2006
- “Disparate Markets: Language, Nation, and Education in North India.” American Ethnologist 32(3):460-78, 2005
- “In the Mouth but not on the Map: Visions of Language and Their Enactment in the Hindi Belt.” Journal of Pragmatics 36(4):633-61, 2004
- “Advertising in the Periphery: Languages and Schools in a North Indian City.” Language in Society 31(2):213-42, 2002
College Service
Department chair, Anthropology, 2011-14
Council on Academic Policy, 2010 (fall) and 2011-14
Levitt Council member (Anthropology Department representative), 2009-12
Self-study for accreditation standards, Middle States Commission on Higher Education, co-Chair of Student Admission and Retention and Student Support Services Subcommittee, 2009-11
Hamilton College Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects, 2007-10
Shared Governance Subcommittee, Hamilton College Strategic Planning Initiative, 2008-10
Library Committee, 2008-10
Professional Affiliations
American Anthropological Association (American Ethnological Society, Council on Anthropology and Education, Society for Linguistic Anthropology)
Association for Asian Studies
International Pragmatics Association
American Folklore Society
Appointed to the Faculty
2006Educational Background
Ph.D., Syracuse University
M.A., Syracuse University
B.A., University of Chicago
