WKU News

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Kappa Tau Alpha has awarded Professor Enakshi Roy of Western Kentucky University a $1,000 grant to help her conduct research on Bengali women’s magazines, periodicals that sowed the seeds of feminism in India.

Roy, an assistant professor in the School of Media, plans to study the essays written by women in 11 Bengali periodicals from 1865 to 1947, the time period known as the Bengali Renaissance. She will focus on the magazines’ coverage on women’s education in India, the Indian nationalist movement and the key ideas of the first wave of Western feminism. She will also study how each magazine attracted its target audience.

 The KTA grant will cover part of her travel expenses to Kolkata, where she will do archive research and data collection.

“This project focuses on an under-studied area in media and communication studies research—it brings forth the voices of marginalized groups from the Global South,” Roy said.

Kappa Tau Alpha, the national college honor society for journalism and mass communication, conducts the grant program to provide research assistance to chapter advisers and to recognize their efforts to promote excellence in scholarship.  The society has chapters at 97 universities. Roy has served as adviser of the Western Kentucky University chapter for two years.

In addition to Roy, KTA advisers Patrick File, of the University of Nevada, Reno, and Sheri Broyles, of the University of North Texas, received research grants. Since KTA began the grant program in 2003, the society has awarded 37 grants totaling more than $31,500.