I am an assistant professor of English and affiliate faculty in Transnational Asian Studies and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University. I am also Secretary of the Executive Committee of the MLA's Global Anglophone Forum and a member of the Editorial Collective of MFS: Modern Fiction Studies. At Rice, I serve on the Governing Council of the Chao Center for Asian Studies and, from January 2024, the Faculty Council of the Humanities Research Center.
My research begins with contemporary literature and opens onto questions about identity, temporality, and knowledge production across fields. I pursue questions about the relationship between ethnic particularity, postcolonial histories and futures, and the aspirations of universality and worldliness. I am currently finishing a book, Overdetermined, that offers a critical reassessment of the boundaries and field imaginaries of the ethnic, postcolonial, and Anglophone through a metacritical, institutionally-situated analysis of 20th and 21st century Indian English literatures. I am also writing a book of essays, What is 'We'?, for "The New Basics" series from Agenda Publishing, and cowriting The Portal, with Chi Rainer Bornfree. I am co-editor, with Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, and Pavitra Sundar, of a field-announcing volume in interdisciplinary Accent Studies, called Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023). I have also edited two special issues: "From Postcolonial to World Anglophone: South Asia as Test Case" (Interventions 2018) and, with J. Daniel Elam, "1990 at 30" (post45 Contemporaries 2020).
I am currently co-editing two special issues (questions and proposal welcome!):
I have contributed to a number of academic books and journals across fields, including MLQ, ARIEL, Post45, Interventions, GLQ, South Asian Review, Comparative Literature Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Studies in South Asian Film & Media, Feminist Formations, Women & Performance, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, The Critic as Amateur (Bloomsbury), and Teaching Anglophone South Asian Women Writers (MLA Teaching Options). Essays have appeared online at The New Yorker, Public Books, L.A. Review of Books, and Guernica, and in print at The Caravan, The Philosopher, and Himal Southasian, among other outlets.
From 2007-2009, I was the Editor of India Currents magazine, for which I wrote a regular column from 2001-2016. My editorial tenure at India Currents earned an Ideas Festival scholarship from the Aspen Institute, and my column has been syndicated by NAM, SJBeez, Khabar, and The Aerogram. I am a recipient of the California Journalism Award, two Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards, and five New America Media awards. I have been a longtime contributor to the South Asian American Digital Archive, including as Co-Chair of SAADA's Academic Council and Affiliated Scholars.
I did my undergraduate work as an Angier B. Duke Scholar at Duke University, graduating summa cum laude and phi beta kappa with a BA in Literature. I received my PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2016. My dissertation was awarded an American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. At Berkeley, I taught and designed multiple undergraduate courses, for which I received an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award and a Teaching Effectiveness Award. From 2016-2017, I worked as an assistant professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where I co-curated the UNR Gender, Race, and Identity series in "Migration and Diaspora." From 2017-2022, I worked as an assistant professor of English and Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory at the University of Arizona, where I was part of the organizing team for the 2020-22 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on "Neoliberalism at the Neopopulist Crossroads."
My research begins with contemporary literature and opens onto questions about identity, temporality, and knowledge production across fields. I pursue questions about the relationship between ethnic particularity, postcolonial histories and futures, and the aspirations of universality and worldliness. I am currently finishing a book, Overdetermined, that offers a critical reassessment of the boundaries and field imaginaries of the ethnic, postcolonial, and Anglophone through a metacritical, institutionally-situated analysis of 20th and 21st century Indian English literatures. I am also writing a book of essays, What is 'We'?, for "The New Basics" series from Agenda Publishing, and cowriting The Portal, with Chi Rainer Bornfree. I am co-editor, with Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, and Pavitra Sundar, of a field-announcing volume in interdisciplinary Accent Studies, called Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023). I have also edited two special issues: "From Postcolonial to World Anglophone: South Asia as Test Case" (Interventions 2018) and, with J. Daniel Elam, "1990 at 30" (post45 Contemporaries 2020).
I am currently co-editing two special issues (questions and proposal welcome!):
- "The Asian Century: Idea, Method, and Media" (Verge: Studies in Global Asias) with Christopher T. Fan, Paul Nadal, and Tina Chen [CFP]
- "Fictions of the Pandemic" (MFS: Modern Fiction Studies) with Roanne Kantor [CFP]
I have contributed to a number of academic books and journals across fields, including MLQ, ARIEL, Post45, Interventions, GLQ, South Asian Review, Comparative Literature Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Studies in South Asian Film & Media, Feminist Formations, Women & Performance, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, The Critic as Amateur (Bloomsbury), and Teaching Anglophone South Asian Women Writers (MLA Teaching Options). Essays have appeared online at The New Yorker, Public Books, L.A. Review of Books, and Guernica, and in print at The Caravan, The Philosopher, and Himal Southasian, among other outlets.
From 2007-2009, I was the Editor of India Currents magazine, for which I wrote a regular column from 2001-2016. My editorial tenure at India Currents earned an Ideas Festival scholarship from the Aspen Institute, and my column has been syndicated by NAM, SJBeez, Khabar, and The Aerogram. I am a recipient of the California Journalism Award, two Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards, and five New America Media awards. I have been a longtime contributor to the South Asian American Digital Archive, including as Co-Chair of SAADA's Academic Council and Affiliated Scholars.
I did my undergraduate work as an Angier B. Duke Scholar at Duke University, graduating summa cum laude and phi beta kappa with a BA in Literature. I received my PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2016. My dissertation was awarded an American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. At Berkeley, I taught and designed multiple undergraduate courses, for which I received an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award and a Teaching Effectiveness Award. From 2016-2017, I worked as an assistant professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where I co-curated the UNR Gender, Race, and Identity series in "Migration and Diaspora." From 2017-2022, I worked as an assistant professor of English and Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory at the University of Arizona, where I was part of the organizing team for the 2020-22 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on "Neoliberalism at the Neopopulist Crossroads."
