Indian student gets US fellowship for LGBT research in Tamil Nadu

Washington, July 1: An Indian student has received an LGBT scholarship from California University to investigate how political tensions have led to the proliferation of new notions of sexual identity in Tamil Nadu. "The movements taking place in Tamil Nadu right now draw on LGBT rights language, but they also draw on a lot of other histories," says this year's winner Shakthi Nataraj, an anthropology PhD student at UC Berkeley. She is one of the three recipients of the Philip Brett LGBT Studies Fellowship launched in 2009 to honour Philip Brett, a pioneer of lesbian and gay musicology, who taught at Berkeley from 1966 to 1991, Nataraj grew up in Chennai, and spent time around nonprofits that focused in HIV and gender issues because of the work her mother did, according to a university release. As Nataraj grew older, she reconnected with the LGBT community in Chennai. Gradually, gender and sexuality rights became her work, and pursuing a PhD in the field offers an alternate way to engage in it.