Kuldip Kuwahara

Dr. Kuldip Kuwahara received the North Carolina Service Award for 25 years of outstanding service to the State of North Carolina. She is a professor of English in the Department of Language and Literature at North Carolina Central University. A graduate of Panjab University, India, a Postgraduate British Council Scholar in the Department of English Studies at the University of Edinburgh, U.K., an NEH Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an alumna of the School of Theory and Criticism at Dartmouth College, Kuwahara received her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She has published in national and international journals and is the author of "Jane Austen at Play: Self-Consciousness, Beginnings, and Endings."

Kuwahara's research in literature and peace studies, with a focus on the fiction and non-fiction of Maxine Hong Kingston, was supported by an NCCU Faculty Senate Seed Grant to invite Asian-American writer and peace activist, Kingston, to the campus of NCCU. The Peace Initiative on campus grows out of Kuwahara's efforts to collaborate across disciplines, and in the community, to establish a Citizens of the World Club at NCCU and a Peace Club for graduate students in the Department of Gandhian and Peace Studies at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.

She has initiated regular Peace Circle meetings to raise the level of peace consciousness on campus and beyond; her efforts to develop interdisciplinary courses in peace and justice studies to underline democratic ideals of equity, inclusiveness and community-building, in the context of a  liberal education, are ongoing. She has been elected to represent NCCU as a delegate to the UNC Faculty Assembly and is a member of the HMSI caucus, as well as  the DEI committee, actively engaged in working with students, faculty, and administrators, across the 17 UNC campuses, to create a healthy teaching-learning environment that addresses mental health issues and promotes well-being, peace, and happiness in the Age of COVID-19, with all its challenges and opportunities.

With her knowledge of seven languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, German, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese, and her extensive travels, Kuwahara brings an East-West perspective, and an interdisciplinary and holistic approach, to teaching, research, and service at NCCU. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses such as Contemporary Multi-Ethnic Literature; Asian and African Diaspora Studies; Critical Theory; Asian and Asian-American Women's Studies; Jane Austen and Happiness Studies; Asia in Western Literature; 18th-and 19th-century British Literature; British, American, and Contemporary World Literatures in English; Postcolonial Studies; and Stylistics, Rhetoric and Composition.

Kuwahara has served as chair of the Research and Professional Development committee in the Faculty Senate at NCCU and received the Faculty Senate Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievements, as well as the Service Learning  Award.  She has served as chair of the Tenure, Promotion, and Re-Appointment Committee at the department, college, and university levels and received the Dean's Research and Teaching Excellence Award from the College of Arts and Sciences. A member of the Board of  the Scholarly Communications Institute, supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation and Duke University Libraries, she was awarded a Duke-NCCU Digital-Humanities Fellowship at the John Hope Franklin Institute and also received the James E. Shepard Memorial Champion Award. Presently, she's using digital humanities (DH) tools to explore science fiction and artificial intelligence in Asian-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro's recent publication, "Klara and the Sun."

Her specialties include British literature, Jane Austen, Asian literature, and Maxine Hong Kingston.

Education