In Memoriam: 1990s

Notices sorted by graduation date

Anantha Sudhakar (Col ’98) of Austin, Texas, died Aug. 11, 2021. She majored in English and women’s studies at UVA and completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Washington and Rutgers University. In 2012, she became a professor in the College of Ethnic Studies and Department of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. She earned tenure in 2019 and served as the assistant dean of the College of Ethnic Studies from 2020 to 2021. She was granted status as professor emerita upon her retirement in 2021. Ms. Sudhakar transformed the field of Asian American studies through her research, writing and activism. Before joining SFSU, she worked at the Asian American Writers Workshop in New York City and was the recipient of two Andrew W. Mellon fellowships, as well as a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Her published research focused on cross-racial solidarities between Black and Asian populations, and on art and activism about working-class, undocumented and queer South Asian immigrants living and working in the U.S. and Canada. Ms. Sudhakar was a tireless leader in racial and gender justice, most prominently within the South Asian American community. She was a board member of SAMAR (South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection); the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), a nonprofit organization for the digital documentation and preservation of South Asian American history; and the South Asian Womxn’s Creative Collective (SAWCC), an arts activist organization that promotes the creative work of South Asian women artists living in the U.S. and Canada. Most recently, Sudhakar wrote about her journey with metastatic breast cancer in the anthology Untold: Defining Moments of the Uprooted. The SFSU Asian American Studies Department and her family have established the Anantha Sudhakar Scholarship Endowment in honor of her scholarship and activism. She is survived by her husband, Ramesh Kathanadhi, and her parents.