Metadata
Title
Natasha Raheja
Category
general
UUID
7e6e46cd3b7f45b985ff3b4e21cfe2d1
Source URL
https://anthropology.cornell.edu/natasha-raheja
Parent URL
https://anthropology.cornell.edu/grad-field-faculty
Crawl Time
2026-03-09T06:57:33+00:00
Rendered Raw Markdown 
# Natasha Raheja

**Source**: https://anthropology.cornell.edu/natasha-raheja
**Parent**: https://anthropology.cornell.edu/grad-field-faculty

## Assistant Professor

### Overview

I am a political and visual anthropologist working in the areas of migration, borders, state power, aesthetics, and ethnographic film. My current research generates medium-specific insights across writing and film to advance political theory on majority-minority relations and majoritarianism. In the context of cross-border migration and immigration policy in South Asia, I ask, how do majorities come to imagine themselves as minorities? Conversely, how do minorities come to imagine justice as part of majorities? How do majority-minority politics exceed the parameters of states, in ways that are not nation bound?

Currently in production, my documentary film, *Kitne Passports?* (How many Passports?), features cross-caste, Pakistani Hindu migrant families in India, visualizing their shift between minority and majority status. The film is a second project that emerges from first project and forthcoming book, *The People, in Parts: the Majoritarian Work of the Minority Form* (forthcoming with University of Chicago Press). The book is an ethnographic account of Pakistani Hindu migration to India that theorizes the flexibility of the religious minority form across state borders in South Asia. Together, these works explore the relationships between religious nationalism, state machinery, and modes of cross-border belonging in the context of majority-minority relations in liberal democracies.

Extending my interest in uneven mobilities and borders, I am also completing an experimental short film series on the movement of non-human animals and everyday objects across the India-Pakistan border. Films in the series include: [*A Gregarious Species*](https://www.mast-journal.org/invasive-media-the-making-of-a-gregarious-species), *Kaagaz ke Chakkar*, and *Enemy Property*. I believe that the study and production of film offer insights into the embodied, sensory dimensions of knowledge production. My first ethnographic film, [*Cast in India*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJvy1f3pQao)(Documentary Educational Resources), raised questions around the relationship between built infrastructure in New York City and labor infrastructure in Howrah, India in the context of everyday urban objects such as manhole covers.

### Publications

*The People, in Parts: the Majoritarian Work of the Minority Form*. Forthcoming Book withUniversity of Chicago Press.\
\
[Fuzzy Borders: Media, Migration Brokerage, and State Bureaucracy.](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/amet.13224) *American Ethnologist.* 2024

[Visualizing Citizenship in a Bureaucratic Frame.](http://doi.org/10.1111/var.12290) *Visual Anthropology Review.*2023

[Invasive Media: The Making of A Gregarious Species](https://www.mast-journal.org/vol-4-no-1-2023). *Journal of Media Art Study and Theory*. 2023

with Ghazal Asif. [Pakistani Politicians as Hindu Gods: The Visual Excesses of a Religious National Imaginary.](https://polarjournal.org/2023/03/24/pakistani-politicians-as-hindu-gods-the-visual-excesses-of-a-religious-national-imaginary/) *Political and Legal Anthropology Review.* 2023\
\
[Governing by Proximity: State Performance and Migrant Citizenship on the India-Pakistan Border.](https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/5029) *Cultural Anthropology.* 2022

[Our Sisters and Daughters: Pakistani Hindu Migrant Masculinities and Digital Claims to Indian Citizenship.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15562948.2022.2032906) *Journal of Immigration and Refugee Studies.*2022

[Virtual Belonging, Digital Diaspora, and Hindu Sindhi Identity in the early 2000s.](https://brill.com/view/journals/joss/2/1/article-p1_2.xml)*Journal of Sindhi Studies.*2022

[A Pakistani Hindu demographic Migration Survey, western Rajasthan](https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003246800-48/pakistani-hindu-demographic-survey-western-rajasthan-natasha-raheja). Handbook of Refugees in India. Routledge Press. 2022

with Ghazal Asif. [Unwelcome Guests and Hostages: Minority Claims on the State](https://polarjournal.org/2020/09/07/unwelcome-guests-and-hostages-minority-claims-on-the-state/) *Political and Legal Anthropology Review.*2020

with Syantani Chatterjee. [India's Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA): Citizenship and Belonging in India.](https://polarjournal.org/2020/09/07/indias-citizenship-amendment-act-caa-citizenship-and-belonging-in-india/) *Political and Legal Anthropology.* 2020.

[Neither Here nor There: Pakistani Hindu Refugee Claims at the Interface of the International and South Asian Refugee Regimes.](https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article/31/3/334/4922733)*Journal of Refugee Studies*. 2018

[Warriors of Goja: Pains and Pleasures of the Sikh Male Body.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17448727.2014.941205) *Sikh Formations*. 2014

## Edited Collections

with Mohsin Bhat. Minority/Majority Politics. *Borderlines.* Forthcoming\
\
with Zeynep Gürsel and Karen Strassler. [Bureaucratic Portraiture and Practices of Citizenship](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/var.12293). Visual Anthropology Review. 2023\
\
with Syantani Chatterjee. [India's Citizenship Amendment Act.](https://polarjournal.org/2020/09/07/indias-citizenship-amendment-act-caa/) Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 2020

## Op-Eds

with Uttara Shahani. [70 years on, why do Sindhis still need to prove they belong?](https://www.facebook.com/Cornell.Anthro/posts/op-ed-by-natasha-raheja-and-uttara-shahani-in-the-times-of-india70-years-on-why-/1404770618106152/) *Times of India.*2025 *Translated into Hindi and Sindhi.*\
\
[A love story that challenges nationalism in South Asia? Not so fast](https://www.dawn.com/news/1770453/a-love-story-that-challenges-nationalism-in-south-asia-not-so-fast)*. Dawn News.*2023\
*Translated into Nepali,*

## Films and Video Installations

*Border Trilogy -* *Enemy Property* (in Production); *Kaagaz ke Chakkar*(in Production); [*A Gregarious Species*](https://www.mast-journal.org/invasive-media-the-making-of-a-gregarious-species)(Single-channel Video Installation, 9 min on loop, 2021)\
*Select Screenings:* Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Flaherty NYC, Mimesis Documentary Festival, Mellon Border Environments Seminar, Rhode Island School of Design; Experimenter Learning Programme; Cornell Biennial SWARM; CAMRA at Penn Screening Scholarship Media Festival

*Kitne Passports?*(in Production)

*1982*(6 min, USA/India, in Post-Production)\
\
*Stand Stable Here* with Vijayanka Nair (2-channel video installation, 8 min loop, 2019)

[*Sindhi Kadhi*](https://www.grandmasproject.org/en/recipe/sindhi-kadhi) (8 min, India/USA/France, 2018)\
Produced by The Grandmas Project

*Jodhpur Films* (50 min, India/Australia, 2016)\
Childhood and Modernity Video Workshop Facilitated by Natasha Raheja\
Directed by David MacDougall (Australian National University)

[*Fishermen’s Right to Know*](https://www.southernexposurefilms.org/films/fishermens-right-to-know) (10 min, USA, 2015)\
Produced by the Southern Environmental Law Center

[*Cast in India*](https://www.kanopy.com/product/cast-india) (26 min, USA/India, 2014)\
*Distributed by*Documentary Educational Resources\
*Select Screenings:* DOC NYC, Margaret Mead Film Festival, Sebastapol, Athens Ethnographic Film Festival, Sebastopol Documentary Festival, Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, ETNOfilm, ETHNOCINECA, International Documentary Association

[*Malini Srinivasan*](https://vimeo.com/46830141) (10 min, USA, 2012)

Sindhi Voices Project Oral History Interviews (2011-2014; archived with the [1947 Partition Archive](https://www.1947partitionarchive.org/))\

## Interviews and Roundtables

with Stephen Campbell, Adrian D. Godboldt, Elise Hjalmarson, Seth M. Holmes, Saida Hodžić, Natasha Raheja, Gerardo Rodriguez Solis, Arjun Shankar, Jennifer E. Shaw. [Borders, labor, and beyond: Collective reflections on Harsha Walia's writing, activism, and influence on the anthropology of work](https://anthrosource-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/doi/full/10.1111/awr.12269). *Anthropology of Work Review.* 2024

## Book and Film Reviews

[Documenting Worker Struggle.](https://culanth.org/fieldsights/sacrificial-labor) Visual and New Media Review, *Fieldsights*, Cultural Anthropology Website. August 27, 2020

Mediating Mobility: Visual Anthropology in the Age of Migration. *Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies* (2018): 148-150.

[Ishaare: Gestures and Signs in Mumbai](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/aman.12965) *American Anthropologist* 119.4 (2017): 756-757.

With Rowena Potts. [Interview with Shashwati Talukdar.](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/var.12082) *Visual Anthropology Review*31.2 (2015): 201-202.

## In the news

- [College of Arts and Sciences announces 2026 Klarman Fellows](/news/college-arts-and-sciences-announces-2026-klarman-fellows)
- [In India, computer typists embody ‘fuzzy’ nature of state borders](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/12/india-computer-typists-embody-fuzzy-nature-state-borders)
- [Cornell Center for Social Sciences names 14 faculty fellows](/news/cornell-center-social-sciences-names-14-faculty-fellows)
- [Creating ‘political economy of hope’ at Pakistan-India border](/news/creating-political-economy-hope-pakistan-india-border)
- [Migrations grants fund worldwide interdisciplinary projects](/news/migrations-grants-fund-worldwide-interdisciplinary-projects)

## Courses - Fall 2025

- [ANTHR 3110 : Documentary Production Fundamentals](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/ANTHR/3110)
- [ANTHR 4910 : Independent Study: Undergrad I](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/ANTHR/4910)
- [ANTHR 4920 : Independent Study: Undergrad II](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/ANTHR/4920)
- [ANTHR 4983 : Honors Thesis Research](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/ANTHR/4983)
- [ANTHR 6110 : Documentary Production Fundamentals](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/ANTHR/6110)
- [ANTHR 7910 : Independent Study: Grad I](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/ANTHR/7910)
- [ANTHR 7920 : Independent Study: Grad II](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/ANTHR/7920)
- [ANTHR 7930 : Independent Study: Grad III](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/ANTHR/7930)

## Courses - Spring 2026

- [ANTHR 4401 : Advanced Documentary Production](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/4401)
- [ANTHR 4424 : Ethnographic Film Theory and History](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/4424)
- [ANTHR 4910 : Independent Study: Undergrad I](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/4910)
- [ANTHR 4920 : Independent Study: Undergrad II](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/4920)
- [ANTHR 4984 : Honors Thesis Write-Up](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/4984)
- [ANTHR 7401 : Advanced Documentary Production](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/7401)
- [ANTHR 7424 : Ethnographic Film Theory and History](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/7424)
- [ANTHR 7910 : Independent Study: Grad I](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/7910)
- [ANTHR 7920 : Independent Study: Grad II](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/7920)
- [ANTHR 7930 : Independent Study: Grad III](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP26/class/ANTHR/7930)