Assistant Professor

Asian Studies, English

I am Assistant Professor in the English Department, where I teach classes on Global Anglophone, and Postcolonial Literatures. My research focuses on the movement of people, commodities, and ideologies between Asia, and the Americas in the nineteenth century. In particular I study the migration of indentured servants or “coolies” from India and China to the British-Caribbean after the emancipation of enslaved African peoples. I am excited to bring this research to students at Colorado College through classes on Caribbean literature and cultural production from the nineteenth century to contemporary times, South Asian literature in a global and diasporic context, and on the connected histories of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.

I received my Ph.D. from the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that I received an M.Phil. from the Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and my B.A. and M.A. degrees from Jadavpur University, India. My first book project currently in progress, Re-casting the Coolie: Racial Capitalism, Caste, and Indian Indentureship in the Caribbean investigates the production of the figure of the “coolie” through appositional readings of literary fiction and historical-archival materials on indentureship.