Prea Persaud

Religious Studies
LECTURER
Macy 219
ppersaud@uncc.edu

Prea Persaud (B.A. from Rollins College, M.A. from Syracuse University, Doctoral Candidate at the University of Florida) is a Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte where her teaching focuses on Hinduism. In addition to teaching classes on Hinduism and the Hindu diaspora, she also teaches classes on the Caribbean. She is interested in global Hinduism, religion in the Americas (inclusive of the Caribbean), and issues concerning race, identity, and post-colonialism. Her current research looks at the ways in which Hinduism in Trinidad has established itself as a Caribbean religion by appealing to nationalist discourses, inscribing itself on the local landscape, and creating new traditions. By locating Indo-Trinidadian Hinduism within the category of creole religion, she challenges studies on diasporic Hinduism which center India as the homeland, scholarship on the Caribbean which ignore the influence of Asian migration, and the rigidness of categories within the study of religion. Persaud is currently on the steering committee for the Religion, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism Unit of the American Academy of Religion and the guest editor for Nidan: The International Journal for Indian Studies. She previously worked for Digital Library of the Caribbean and continues to support collaborative projects among Caribbean scholars.