Prahas Rudraraju

Graduate Student

Areas of Interest:

Biography

Prahas Rudraraju (they/them) is a non-binary Telugu performer, activist, and non-profit professional from the DMV. They are a second year graduate student in the Asian American Studies M.A. program. Prior to their Master’s program, Prahas worked for 5 years in D.C. and Virginia as a youth practitioner at Asian American LEAD serving low-income AAPI youth and at the Human Rights Campaign as a nonprofit program manager advocating for LGBTQ+ youth and educating youth-serving professionals on intersectional LGBTQ+ inclusion nationally. They graduated from The College of William & Mary in 2017 with dual self-designed degrees in World Performing Arts & Cultures and Asian Pacific Islander American Studies, the latter which they alongside a coalition of faculty and students established as an official academic program, now department, at the institution. Prahas is driven by an innate sense of justice and the belief that a world full of joy and free of suffering is possible. Outside of their professional and academic work, Prahas is a lover of anime, singing, dancing, and lifting.

Research Interests

The nation-state, nationalisms, belonging, necropolitics, biopolitics, neoliberalism, diaspora, globalization, transnationalism, South Asia, South Asian diaspora, postcolonial theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and gender studies.

Prahas Rudraraju