I was most recently an assistant professor of English and Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory at the University of Arizona. From fall 2022, I will be assistant professor of English and affiliate faculty in Transnational Asian Studies at Rice University. I am also Co-Chair of the Academic Council and Affiliated Scholars of the South Asian American Digital Archive.
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 – or, in disciplinary terms, how English literature mediates between Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Area Studies. I am currently writing a book, Identity Archive: How Indian English Literature Became Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone, that aims to contribute to a critical reassessment of the boundaries and field imaginaries of the ethnic and postcolonial by offering a metacritical, institutionally-situated analysis of 20th and 21st century Indian English literatures. 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 (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 cowriting an experimental memoir with Chiara Ricciardone.
I have contributed to a number of academic books and journals across fields, including MLQ, ARIEL, 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 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." I was part of the organizing team for the 2020-22 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on "Neoliberalism at the Neopopulist Crossroads" at the University of Arizona.
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 – or, in disciplinary terms, how English literature mediates between Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Area Studies. I am currently writing a book, Identity Archive: How Indian English Literature Became Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone, that aims to contribute to a critical reassessment of the boundaries and field imaginaries of the ethnic and postcolonial by offering a metacritical, institutionally-situated analysis of 20th and 21st century Indian English literatures. 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 (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 cowriting an experimental memoir with Chiara Ricciardone.
I have contributed to a number of academic books and journals across fields, including MLQ, ARIEL, 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 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." I was part of the organizing team for the 2020-22 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on "Neoliberalism at the Neopopulist Crossroads" at the University of Arizona.
