Madeline Chera

Collaboration

Learning Communities and Peer Mentoring

Collaborative learning and mutual mentorship are critically important to me.

Teaching

Open Educational Resources

I am committed to participating in efforts to make knowledge collaborative and accessible, and one of the easiest ways to do so is through use of open educational resources (OER), which are free of cost, open license, and usually widely accessible through digital formats.

Outreach

Searching for the Center Podcast

I am often asked to speak on topics related to my research for wide general audiences. In 2019, one of my former students interviewed me with his co-host for their podcast, Searching for the Center.

Outreach

Four-Field Trunk Show

As part of the Indiana University South Bend College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS) Campus & Community initiative, I worked with faculty colleagues and student ambassadors in the Anthropology program in AY 2018-2019.

Environment

Environmental Anthropology

In the course, we discussed the principal theories and methods environmental anthropology utilizes and the issues on which it focuses, by looking at case studies from South Asia and the Midwestern US.

Teaching

Supporting Writing

During my undergraduate and graduate studies, I tutored other students as a Writing Tutor. I also led structured writing groups through Indiana University’s Campus Writing Program in AY 2017-2018.

Teaching

Graduate Teaching Apprenticeship Program (GTAP)

I completed the requirements for the Associate and Practitioner levels of Graduate Teaching Apprenticeship Program (GTAP) and received certificates marking that work.

Presentations

Judging Non-Judgement

> Assessing Anthropology Students’ Adoption of Cultural Relativism Reference Chera, Madeline. 2019. “Judging Non-Judgement: Assessing Anthropology Students’ Adoption of Cultural Relativism,” 20th Annual Midwest Conference on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Indiana University South Bend, South Bend, IN, April 2019.

Courses

Food and Culture

Food and Culture offers students a way to explore in-depth an area of anthropology that is growing in popularity but has been a part of the field since its inception.

Food Studies

BOOK REVIEW | Food Culture: Anthropology, Linguistics, and Food Studies

In this review article, I discuss the third volume in a comprehensive three-volume set about methods in interdisciplinary Food Studies research, considering how the book could be used effectively as a reference and guide for students.

Tamil Nadu

Our Drama, Our Food

Susan Seizer and I co-authored a paper using our two specialty foci to discuss the socio-linguistic significance of the inclusive "we" and "our" in Tamil culture.

Teaching

Teaching Awards

More than just a job, teaching is a vocation and is central to who I am. I have been fortunate to receive opportunities to grow as an educator and recognition for effective teaching in the past.

Gender

Country Chicken, Globalization and Discourse

I shared research on young women college students in Tamil Nadu and their views on global and local food systems at the Transecting Healthy and Sustainable Food in the Asia-Pacific Workshop, at Yale-National University of Singapore, in August 2018.

Outreach

Earth Eats Radio Show

My colleague Leigh Bush and I collaborated with current and former Earth Eats hosts and production staff to conduct interviews with Food Studies scholars and other food experts as guest segments. This NPR show is based at WFIU in Bloomington, IN.

Presentations

Our Madurai, Our Food

Multiple Ideologies in Local and Traditional Food Advocacy in Tamil Nadu, India

Tamil Nadu

Transforming Millets: Strategies and Struggles in Changing Taste in Madurai

Drawing on ethnographic evidence collected through field research in and around the city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, this paper explores how the particularities of Tamil history and cultural values shape the current confused status of millets there.