Interview with Sharmila Rudrappa, Ph.D.

Abstract

In the fall of 2023, the Department of Sociology at the University of Kansas invited Dr. Rudrappa to present her research at the annual Clark Lecture. Her presentation titled “Landscapes of Infertility: The Afterlives of Colonialism in India” described how the worlds of plants, animals, insects, and diseases weave in and out of narratives of human reproduction guided by the question: What must be carefully nurtured and what must be exterminated in order to render life possible? Dr. Rudrappa seeks to answer this question by examining the human and non-human aspects of coffee plantations in southern India and how techno-pastoral imaginaries- the human aspiration for orderly, hierarchical landscapes where land, beasts, and nature are managed through technical expertise to generate profits- create both life and death. In this interview, we discuss how the ideas in this talk parallel her previous research about the commodification of women’s bodies on the global market. We also discuss how Dr. Rudrappa integrated her background in conservation biology into an interdisciplinary focus in the sociologies of labor and reproduction, and gained insight about how to structure publications as a graduate student to enhance one’s CV for the job market.