About Himanee Gupta-Carlson
Himanee Gupta-Carlson was born in November, in the midst of a blizzard, in Iowa City, Iowa, to parents recently arrived from India to the United States. Hence, her name Himanee: born of snow, the princess of snows, a derivation of Himalaya, and of the name ascribed to Parvati in her guise as snowy consort to Shiva.
Himanee grew up mostly in Muncie, Indiana, where her family moved when she was three. Her experiece of Muncie was one of feelng as if it were a place where India was always already intertwined: a place where it cost $50 to call India in the early 1970s to talk through a ton of static to relatives for three minutes, as well as to a Pan American flight between the U.S and New Delhi in 1973 that required layovers in Indianapolis, Boston, London, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Beirut and Karachi. A place where Indian mothers never stopped wearing their saris and reared their children to love gulab jamin and samosas. A place families would drive hours to another town on weekend nights to see a Hindi film, in the pre-VCR/DVD age. A place that was good to grow up but also held memories of a plumber who refused to do repairs at her parents hobby and craft shop in 1980 because he thought, at the height of the Tehran hostage crisis, that they were Iranian.
After studying journalism at Northwestern University, Himanee worked as a reporter at newspapers throughout the U.S., including The Idaho Statesman, The Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, The Fort Worth Star Telegram, The Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Times Leader, The Kansas City Star, and The Seattle Times.
A mid-career fellowship for journalists interested in Asia brought her to Hawai'i in 1995, where she began studying the history, religions, politics, and society of India and other nations of South Asia, along with Hindi (the language her parents spoke but never passed on to her) and Hawaiian (the language of those indigenous to Hawai'i). Being in Hawai'i and experiencing the stories of oppression that Hawaiians shared caused Himanee to start looking more deeply at the legacy of British colonialism on her ancestral country of origin and the community of immigrants she was born into. Her probings led to a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Hawai'i as well as many scholarly and creative writings on the immigrant experience.
A few recent writings on the immigrant experience include:
Himanee is completing a book manuscript, Muncie, India(na), and teaches a workshop on "Writing Immigrant Narratives." She also is researching the teaching the roots and evolution of hip-hop as an American and global phenomenon, and probing what it means to be a Christian in a poly-cultural America. A 2011-2012 fellowship through the Wabash Center in Crawfordsville, Indiana, is supporting the latter project. Himanee also speaks extensively on hip-hop and is developing curricula for two future courses centered on the history and contemporary politics of hip-hop.
For details on Himanee's scholarly and creative work, please visit the Immigrant Narratives and Hip-Hop America pages on this website.
To arrange a class, publication, or talk with Himanee, contact her at Himanee.Gupta-Carlson@esc.edu or 518-587-2100 extension 2860.