Rahul Nair is an Associate Professor of History at Antioch College. Previously he has served as an Assistant Professor at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Georgia (2012-13) and at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado (2005-12). He received his doctoral degree in History with a specialization on South Asia, from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006, after graduating with an M.A. in Modern Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. His areas of specialization include South Asia, imperialism, and world history. He is currently working on a book titled, The Rise and Decline of India’s Population Problem in the Twentieth Century. He is fluent in Malayalam, French, Bengali, and Hindi.

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., History, University of Pennsylvania, 2006
• M.A., History, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, 1998
• M.A., Economics, University of Delhi in Delhi, India, 1996
• B.A., Economics, University of Kerala, 1993

COURSES

• HIST 105: The World Beyond: Cultural Imagination, Exchanges and History In this foundation-level course, students will study how people in various parts of the world imagined what was beyond their everyday experiences, particularly across the oceans, and how these imaginings often motivated them to venture out to make contact with these other worlds for purposes of trade, resettlement, and conquest. The course will use early texts of various cultures, travelogues, diaries, ship captains’ accounts, newspaper articles, and other sources to reveal the voices of the participants in historical events.
• HIST 226: World History II, from 1500 CE to present This course provides students with an understanding of the changes experienced by peoples in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas as the interaction between these peoples increased as a result of exploration, trade, and conquest. Topics to be covered will include the global impact of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the establishment of colonies by European nations, the growth and expansion of militarism, the development of foreign policies to manage the interaction between nations, the decolonization movement, and the growth of the global economy.
• HIST 334: The History of a Person: Gandhi Gandhi’s iconic status both in India and abroad owes much to his leadership role in the struggle for Indian independence from British rule. His own life was roughly coterminus with the Indian national movement, which in 1947 resulted in the creation of two nations, India and Pakistan. Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, political morality, and critique of western modernity were developed in the context of and are inextricably linked to the history of the Indian nationalist movement.  In the first part of this course we look at the origins and trace the development of an Indian national movement that was already half a century old when Gandhi came onto the scene. We then examine how under Gandhi’s leadership the nationalist movement becomes a mass movement that culminated in both the tragedy of partition and the triumph of independence.

SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES

• Curriculum Vitae

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Book Manuscript: The Rise and Decline of India’s Population Problem in the Twentieth Century (under contract with Routledge)
• “The Planning of Birth in the Birth of Planning: Medicalized Birth Control as Population Control in India, 1919-1952,” under review in South Asian History and Culture.
• The Population Problem in Inter-war India and China, Panel Organizer, 2017 American Historical Association Conference, Denver, 5-8 January 2017.
• The Planning of Birth and the Birth of Planning: Medicalized Birth Control as Population Control in India, 1919-1952, 2017 American Historical Association Conference, Denver, 6 January 2017.
• The Pitfalls and Potential of Teaching Gandhi to American Undergraduates, Presenter, Roundtable on Teaching South Asia in the U.S. and the Midwest: Strategies, Challenges Possibilities. 2016,Ohio Academy of History Annual Meeting and Conference, 1-2 April 2016.
• Sex and the Nation: A Tale of Two American Visitors to India, 2013, International Conference on South Asian Studies, Leiden, 6-7 December 2013.
• “The Construction of a ‘Population Problem’ in Colonial India 1919-1947,” in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (2011), 39:2, 227-47.