Barbara Rodriguez, Interim Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, features Dr. Shatam Ray in the Faculty in Focus in her April Issue of Querencia at UNM. Article below. 

Shatam Ray, Lecturer III in the Department of History, moved to Albuquerque on a Mellon Dissertation Finishing Fellowship awarded through Emory University. After completing his Ph.D. in 2020, he joined as a faculty member at UNM. He is trained in labor and environmental history with a geographic focus in Modern South Asia. His current book manuscript looks at the history of capitalism as being germane to the ways in which colonial agro-ecological contexts were shaped in the non-metropolitan societies.

“I am deeply interested in seeing the ways in which a global environment of extraction and accumulation is, at first, built up and then, subsequently, perpetuated and reproduced thereby naturalizing both capitalist forms of extraction and the natures of impoverishment they rely on.”

He also is developing an interest in the larger field of science and technology studies, which may include exploring the idea of a working-class history of electricity in India, his native country.

For Ray, his faculty journey at UNM has been made more meaningful because he was able to bring in his interest in environmental history and his focus on Asian history into the UNM teaching fold. “It speaks to UNM student population’s growing appetite for courses that center the history and cultures of Asia — home to 4.7 billion people in the world, living across nearly 50 countries that speak over 2,000 distinct languages. It is a matter of some pride that in my classes I have been able to represent these histories, not just through academic writings in the English language by ‘Western’ scholars but often using primary, secondary, visual, literary and digital sources that are authored and composed by people from those societies themselves, many times in their own languages.”

Developing curriculum around these specific areas would not have been possible without the UNM community, such as the Department of History, and receiving University-wide and departmental grants. “I would not be able to do any of these things had it not been for the cooperation, guidance and support of my colleagues and friends I have made here at UNM. I am also thankful for the Center for Teaching and Learning for conferring me with a Teaching Excellence Award this past academic year.”