Koeli Goel

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Institute of Communications Research, Alumna

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Koeli Moitra Goel is a communications and globalization researcher, published author and community organizer who works in the area of Global Studies in Education, International Development, Communication and New Media, Postcolonial Theory, South Asian Studies and Gender Relations in Global Perspectives. Her current research interest focuses on mobile communication, educational technology and media culture in the U.S. and South Asia. She examines how neoliberal dispensations across the world threaten to erode human rights of millions – for example, migrants who are on the move due to political or ecological reasons – thus depriving them of their rights not merely to proper health care, clean air, water, and food, but also access to education, freedom of speech and movement, family life and livelihood.
Address: Champaign, Illinois, United States

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Chunfeng Lin

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University of Malta

Brandeis University

RMIT University

Texas A&M University - San Antonio

Emily Greenwood

Harvard University

Lai-Jing Chu

Columbia University

Fleura Bardhi

Cass Europe Business School

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Papers by Koeli Goel

Social class as flow and mutability: the Barbados case

Routledge eBooks, Jul 9, 2019

This article draws on ethnographic research that examines the contemporary articulation of class ... more This article draws on ethnographic research that examines the contemporary articulation of class identity in the postcolonial elite school setting of Old College high school in Barbados. From the qualitative data derived from this study, we argue that social class is better conceived as a series of flows, mutations, performances and performatives. We complicate the common-sense notion that class is a stable structure that allows for the categorization of people by providing a nuanced look into the lived experiences of students and alumni at this elite school. We focus on the wearing of uniforms, the use of technological devices, the deployment of language, and student-lead articulations of social class in an increasingly globalized space. Class is defined and (re-)shaped by students' belongings and longings, all of which, too, are, mutable, and can readily mutate in accordance with local and global circumstances of supply and demand.

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Motherhood and Education

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, Aug 31, 2021

Motherhood is the institution on which state and society have traditionally depended for preparin... more Motherhood is the institution on which state and society have traditionally depended for preparing a well-socialized populace even before formal educational systems begin to have an effect. Mothering has taken a new urgency in a 21st-century globalized, neoliberal, and intricately connected world in which the social contract between the state and the individual has been in profound revision. Mothers are being expected to adapt to rapidly changing educational environments with on-site school systems disrupted in response to global health crises and homeschooling assuming spectacularly new meanings. New blended roles for tutoring, mentoring, and counseling while also nurturing the child are now the newest normal for mothers. Considering the pivotal role played by mothers in a human being’s birth, socialization, and education, perhaps educational research can progressively encourage a more nuanced incorporation of motherhood studies. It might be useful to examine the relationship between motherhood and education within a framework of familial power relations combined with a global studies in education perspective. The different facets of motherhood as well as the entangling of care and power are critical to the project of education. Motherhood as institution, motherhood as identity, and motherhood as experience thus become crucial coordinates for an interdisciplinary engagement with motherhood’s relationship with education. While educational technologies and online communication platforms have incrementally transformed the field of education, the mothers role has evolved and mothers often need to be educated so they may best guide their digital native wards. Parents jointly take many decisions regarding children’s education and future, but it is most often the mother who follows through with the agenda. This close personal involvement brings additional responsibilities, authority, and power—all of which have epistemological consequences, highlighting areas that might help establish nuanced connections between motherhood and education.

Trading in Multiculture: The City and the University in the Age of Globalization

The Argonauts of Post-colonial Barbados

Digitalizing Tradition: Staging Postcolonial Elite School Identities in the Online Environment

This chapter probes deeply into the tangled historicities that animate British-bequeathed elite s... more This chapter probes deeply into the tangled historicities that animate British-bequeathed elite schools now operating in new competitive transnational educational markets in selected post-developmental states. The scenarios of this competition are increasingly moving online in photo and video-sharing websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Flicker and in the websites that individual schools are creating to consecrate their school heritages. Drawing from data gathered in a nine-country international study of schools across the world, the theoretical and methodological emphasis in this chapter is on extending the ethnographic focus of this research to a discursive and textual analysis of an emerging digital environment. We examine closely the work that elite institutions in two specific postcolonial societies are doing with their historical archives, preserved cultural objects, architecture, emblems, mottos and their school curricula as they marshal these cultural resources at the crossroads of profound change precipitated by globalization and attendant neoliberal imperatives. This change is articulated across the whole gamut of global forces, connections, and aspirations. It is in relation to and through these dynamics that postcolonial elite schools must now position and reposition themselves – acting and intervening in and responding to new globalizing circumstances that often cut at right angles to the historical narratives and the very social organization of these educational institutions with legacies linked to England. Globalizing developments have precipitated efforts on the part of these schools to mobilize their rich heritages and pasts as a material resource and not simply as a matter of indelible and inviolate tradition. History, then, we maintain in this context, cannot be reduced to the realm of epiphenomena of securely linear school chronologies. Instead, drawing on Walter Benjamin’s “Theses,” we look at the way in which postcolonial school histories are “active in the present” and the way in which schools in India and Barbados are adroitly and selectively managing their school identities in the light of globalization. The results of these interventions are not guaranteed. They often run up against the revolution of rising expectations of school youngsters and their parents, the taste for global cultures and global futures indicative of the global ambitions of the young, and the pressures of alumni and other stakeholder interests which must be navigated.

A New India: Contestations of national identity at the crossroads of postcolonial aspirations and globalized imagination

My dissertation examines contestations of national identity and representation of individual aspi... more My dissertation examines contestations of national identity and representation of individual aspirations within a globalized imagination of 21 st century India. In analyzing the metaphoric construction of a New India, I look at the unrestrained urbanization that has followed economic liberalization and the political mobilization of marginalized sections of the population, also concomitantly emerging within these new urbanscapes. As they intersect with new media practices, community-building and neoliberal restructuring of the state, enterprise and the individual, the tenor of a national community, previously invested in the narrative of a glorious past emerging from classical Hindu roots seem to be merging with myriad flows of globalization, transforming the social landscape of the postcolonial nation in significant ways. In studying this, my study uses archival data and ethnographic research to adopt a critical approach to communication and cultural studies with a focus on exploring how the country's national imagination has been formed within the coordinates of the original Nehruvian trope of the nation as "a new star… of freedom in the East" and the newest construction of "India rising," especially as it develops with relation to conditions of globalization. It examines how globalization has reconstituted the image of the nation, the national community and national prosperity, as well as development and progress-national, regional and individual-in the minds of the ordinary citizen. vii intellectually-gifted and committed activists and citizens in India, among them Abhijit Das, Samrat Basu, Shilpa Bansal, Piali Moitra, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar have all contributed in some form or other to the ideas which circulate in these pages and remain important parts of my life even after this project is done. Last, but not the least, my family members merit a huge thanks for tolerating my frequent departures from my home in Champaign as I prepared for fieldwork in India, my midnight study sessions, the hastily cooked meals, the absences from family vacations and many more other infractions which I could not avoid under pressures of graduate work. My mother, whose wellmeaning impatience in announcing that her daughter is a "professor" despite being cautioned that I was quite a distance from that status, reminded me everyday how urgently I needed to finish my dissertation so she could see her dream come true. My sister and brother-in-law, Shibani and Amit Haldar, whose faith in my intellectual leanings helped me to gain the confidence to come back to school, deserve a heartfelt thank you. My children, Kavi, Oeishik, Natalie and Devayush, while making me proud every day of my life with their stellar achievements in high school, college and work life, also energized me to complete this project on time and conquer all misgivings. The youngest, Dev, merits special mention because, being the last to leave home and closest to me, he knew of my dreams and visions, and my struggles and challenges more than anyone else. He was always trying to be there for me, whether in sending me online links to news stories of pertinence to me, doing copy-editing or helping me with technology issues.

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Stepping out, speaking up: Resisting sexual violence through narratives

Studies in symbolic interaction, Mar 31, 2010

... My KOELI MOITRA GOEL 266 ... One sign carried by a prominent feminist writer and filmmaker,Ap... more ... My KOELI MOITRA GOEL 266 ... One sign carried by a prominent feminist writer and filmmaker,Aparna Sen, reads &amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27;&amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27;We want punishment for the criminals and cops who are responsible for the mass murder and rape in Nandigram.&amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27;&amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27;] Group song: Blowin&amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27; in the Wind (Dylan, 1962). ...

Minding Motherhood and the Burden of an Ancient Blessing: “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons”

Qualitative Inquiry, Dec 8, 2009

This performance is crafted within the narrow space of the author’s existence as a human, as a pe... more This performance is crafted within the narrow space of the author’s existence as a human, as a person, as a female, and as a mother. The rich, intricate experience of a life lived out as a mother of Indian origin, configured out of many years of negotiation between each of these identities becomes the fertile ground for articulation on overarching questions about the representation of motherhood, the problematics, polemics, and politics surrounding it.

Stepping outside the sacred circle: Narratives of violence and disempowerment of the contemporary Indian woman

India is a secular socialist republic and one of the largest democracies in the world. It prides ... more India is a secular socialist republic and one of the largest democracies in the world. It prides itself on its modern constitution, extensive educational system and progressive society. The sophisticated mainstream English print media-frequently staffed by erudite, internationally acclaimed journalists and managed by India's biggest business houses-sketches the image of a prosperous, "rising" and "shining" India through glossy publications. Beneath this superficial veneer of the story oflndia's progress is an underbelly of repressive practices, gender-based discrimination and human rights' violations which reveal a society in which women's rights are minimal, oppression is endemic and economic progress or emancipation is elusive. This thesis posits that the mainstream Hindu patriarchal society uses the metaphor of Sita, a religious and mythical figure, as the ultimate feminine symbol, to discipline and dominate the contemporary Indian woman. This project seeks to explicate the connection between the myth of Sita and the modern woman's position through narratives of women, including the author, who have ventured outside their boundaries rather than maintain the code of silence imposed on them by Indian society. Most of the narratives take place within the context of a crisis surrounding an agricultural movement against land acquisition by big business in West Bengal's Midnapore district. The thesis also scrutinizes the print media coverage ofthis farmers' movement in an effort to show how the mainstream media often ignores the woman's experience even when they are the ones who have to pay the heaviest prices for being part of a political environment. In exploring the way these women craft their stories within the constraints of their political and social existence, this project identifies very distinctive efforts by the women to enact their resistance.

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In Other Spaces: Contestations of National Identity in “New” India’s Globalized Mediascapes

Journalism & Communication Monographs, Mar 1, 2018

The sense of a nation as a cohesive entity bound by a distinct language, culture, and traditions ... more The sense of a nation as a cohesive entity bound by a distinct language, culture, and traditions has been increasingly challenged in the age of globalization. Any discussion of national identity unfolds on a ground which is complicated and fluid. It is often defined by mass migrations across volatile regions and immigration debates within most organized societies, and also contingent upon unforeseen roles played by social media in crucial fields of politics, democratic participation, and communication. India's national identity has undergone a drastic transformation in the era of globalization and media proliferation. This monograph examines conspicuous spaces and moments of material and digital life in the National Capital Region to understand the underlying momentum for the metaphorical construction of a "New India" and to provide an analytical framework for political and cultural transactions that have defined the nation's journey toward a new identity and national imagination. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in India, print and new media analysis, and archival research, I examine globalization's uneven effects and how global culture has often destabilized, but numerously reinforced, various power structures within the nation.

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Cultural Studies and Education in the Digital Age

Springer eBooks, 2015

Cultural Studies and Education in the Digital Age

A New India: Contestations of national identity at the crossroads of postcolonial aspirations and globalized imagination

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Stepping outside the sacred circle: Narratives of violence and disempowerment of the contemporary Indian woman

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Motherhood and Education

The Argonauts of Post-colonial Barbados

Trading in Multiculture: The City and the University in the Age of Globalization

Spaces of New Colonialism

The world before us: reappraising globalization in education in the tumult of contemporary change

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

In Other Spaces: Contestations of National Identity in “New” India’s Globalized Mediascapes

Journalism & Communication Monographs

The sense of a nation as a cohesive entity bound by a distinct language, culture, and traditions ... more The sense of a nation as a cohesive entity bound by a distinct language, culture, and traditions has been increasingly challenged in the age of globalization. Any discussion of national identity unfolds on a ground which is complicated and fluid. It is often defined by mass migrations across volatile regions and immigration debates within most organized societies, and also contingent upon unforeseen roles played by social media in crucial fields of politics, democratic participation, and communication. India’s national identity has undergone a drastic transformation in the era of globalization and media proliferation. This monograph examines conspicuous spaces and moments of material and digital life in the National Capital Region to understand the underlying momentum for the metaphorical construction of a “New India” and to provide an analytical framework for political and cultural transactions that have defined the nation’s journey toward a new identity and national imagination. D...

Social class as flow and mutability: the Barbados case

Routledge eBooks, Jul 9, 2019

Download

Motherhood and Education

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, Aug 31, 2021

Trading in Multiculture: The City and the University in the Age of Globalization

The Argonauts of Post-colonial Barbados

Digitalizing Tradition: Staging Postcolonial Elite School Identities in the Online Environment

A New India: Contestations of national identity at the crossroads of postcolonial aspirations and globalized imagination

Download

Stepping out, speaking up: Resisting sexual violence through narratives

Studies in symbolic interaction, Mar 31, 2010

Minding Motherhood and the Burden of an Ancient Blessing: “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons”

Qualitative Inquiry, Dec 8, 2009

Stepping outside the sacred circle: Narratives of violence and disempowerment of the contemporary Indian woman

Download

In Other Spaces: Contestations of National Identity in “New” India’s Globalized Mediascapes

Journalism & Communication Monographs, Mar 1, 2018

Download

Cultural Studies and Education in the Digital Age

Springer eBooks, 2015

Cultural Studies and Education in the Digital Age

A New India: Contestations of national identity at the crossroads of postcolonial aspirations and globalized imagination

Download

Stepping outside the sacred circle: Narratives of violence and disempowerment of the contemporary Indian woman

Download

Motherhood and Education

The Argonauts of Post-colonial Barbados

Trading in Multiculture: The City and the University in the Age of Globalization

Spaces of New Colonialism

The world before us: reappraising globalization in education in the tumult of contemporary change

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

In Other Spaces: Contestations of National Identity in “New” India’s Globalized Mediascapes

Journalism & Communication Monographs

The sense of a nation as a cohesive entity bound by a distinct language, culture, and traditions ... more The sense of a nation as a cohesive entity bound by a distinct language, culture, and traditions has been increasingly challenged in the age of globalization. Any discussion of national identity unfolds on a ground which is complicated and fluid. It is often defined by mass migrations across volatile regions and immigration debates within most organized societies, and also contingent upon unforeseen roles played by social media in crucial fields of politics, democratic participation, and communication. India’s national identity has undergone a drastic transformation in the era of globalization and media proliferation. This monograph examines conspicuous spaces and moments of material and digital life in the National Capital Region to understand the underlying momentum for the metaphorical construction of a “New India” and to provide an analytical framework for political and cultural transactions that have defined the nation’s journey toward a new identity and national imagination. D...

Koeli Goel

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