Jamila is a rising senior from Bethlehem, New York studying American Studies and International and Public Affairs on the Development Track. In American Studies, her focus area investigates how transnational flows and circuits of knowledge, culture, and practices influence how identities and narratives are constructed in American society and globally, specifically in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. At Brown, she is a Sexual Assault Peer Education (SAPE) Coordinator on campus and is a member of the Watson Institute DIAP committee and Decolonization at Brown. In her free time, she enjoys drinking tea, drawing, and hiking.

Project: 

Brahmanical patriarchy describes a dual oppression based on gender and caste that structures hierarchy and power within South Asian communities. This interplay of gender and caste sets the conditions for continuing a long legacy of violence against Dalit women that exists explicitly in South Asia, but is silenced within the diaspora. To explore the dimensions of "brahmanical patriarchy" as it manifests in the South Asian diaspora, my research project asks: what does culturally informed survivor support look like in practice in South Asian American domestic violence organizations, and how can this be adapted to spaces where it is absent? How is caste approached (or erased) from this framework? To illuminate these questions, I plan to engage in community-based participatory research in collaboration with South Asian domestic violence organizations.

Advisor: Professor Elena Shih