"I have my feet in one department and three programs," says Lavina Shankar, assistant professor of English at Bates. Her scholarship and teaching in one area, such as Asian American women writers, often lead her on a path toward another, such as the cultural identity of South Asian immigrant women.

Since arriving at Bates in 1996, the Calcutta-born Shankar has introduced seven completely new courses, broadening her department's emphasis from mainly modern British literature to including an array of post-colonial literature and theory offerings. "I bridge mainstream writers of the canon and newer voices. It's my intellectual and personal investment in research and teaching."

With Rajini Srikanth, she co-edited A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America (Temple University Press, 1998). This well-received collection of essays breaks new ground by exploring cultural identity among Americans whose roots are in the Indian subcontinent and seeks to answer the questions "What does it mean to be South Asian in America?" and "How do South Asian Americans define themselves within Asian America?" Until the book appeared, Shankar says, Asian American studies focused on the scholarship of Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, omitting and misunderstanding the contributions of South Asians.

Interest in the book led to a series of keynotes and invited lectures throughout the United States last year. Bridging continents and cultures, she continued in spring 2000 to England for research and to Trinidad, France and India, where she presented the exploration of Indian and Asian American feminist theory. "What unites and separates women?" she asks, investigating class, biology and nationality.

Shankar also teaches sociocultural approaches to children's literature, looking at the creation of various identities through childhood literary experiences. She conducts a professional development workshop for local teachers and sends her Bates students into area elementary schools, where they teach grade schoolers under the guidance of the teachers Shankar has trained. "It's a model of service-learning where all are serving, teaching and learning at the same time."