Rate My Professor Falu Bakrania

Falu Bakrania is Professor and Chair of the Department of Race and Resistance Studies (RRS) in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. She earned her B.A. in sociology and economics from the University of California, Berkeley, M.A. in sociology from Harvard University, and Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University. Bakrania has served as a faculty member at SFSU for 19 years, having previously been Assistant Professor of Sociology and Asian/Asian American Studies at SUNY-Binghamton. She co-directed SFSU’s South Asian Studies Initiative (SASI) for over a decade and, as co-director of a UISFL grant (2006-2008), helped create the South Asian Studies minor and a South Asian American Internship Program, and co-organized the initiative's first annual conference.

Her research specializations include the South Asian diaspora, gender and sexuality, caste, nationalism, transnationalism, and popular culture. Notable publications are her book Bhangra and Asian Underground: South Asian Music and the Politics of Belonging in Britain (Duke University Press, 2013); contributions to Transnational South Asians (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Electronica, Dance, and Club Music (Ashgate, 2011); and articles including “Affecting Space: South Asian American Activism and the Visual Politics of Home” in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (2019), “The mediated life of (Ajit) Pai: Disciplining ‘model minorities’ in neoliberal times” in South Asian Popular Culture (2023), and “Caste-ing White Supremacy: Thind, Cisco, and the Politics of Belonging” in Ethnic Studies Review (2023).

In 2024, Bakrania received the San Francisco State University Academic Senate Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Service among tenured faculty. A founding member of RRS, she has chaired the department since 2019, fostering growth in majors and minors, faculty scholarship through initiatives like the New Chairs Faculty and Chairs Development Day (NCFCDD) and writing circles, and promoting equity in gender, class, and race. She advocates for South Asian communities, volunteers with the Bay Area non-profit Maitri supporting survivors, and contributed to the Auntie Sewing Squad's mutual aid efforts during the pandemic by sewing masks for marginalized communities.