I’m interested in the ways that culture, politics, ethics, and aesthetics intersect, so in all of my classes, we analyze texts within complex social formations and specific historical contexts. Recently, I’ve taught courses in cultural studies, border narratives, global film, the literature of racial capitalism, and the representation of race in contemporary US film. I’ve also written on many of these topics, as well as on contemporary postcolonial cultures and their connections to emerging forms of citizenship and changes in neoliberal economic structures.
My latest book, Border Rule: An Abolitionist Refusal (2023, Palgrave Macmillan) examines both border policies and oppositional narratives of “the border” from 2011 through 2021, demonstrating that the term designates not merely a line of territorial control but also a set of social relations shaped by persistent, racially differentiated colonial structures and, more recently, by neoliberal modes of accumulation.
Books
Border Rule: An Abolitionist Refusal. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
Human Rights Discourse in the Post-9/11 Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
The New India: Citizenship, Subjectivity and Economic Liberalization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Selected Articles, Review Essays, and Reviews
“Loss and Liberation in Contemporary Adivasi Narratives.” Mediations 36, 1 (Fall 2022).
“The Return of the Outsider.” Counterpunch. June 1, 2020.
“Globalization and the South Asian Novel.” Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 10. Oxford University Press, 2019.
“Rosa Luxemburg's The Accumulation of Capital, Postcolonial Theory, and the Problem of Present Day Imperialisms.” New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics Vol. 94, 2018: pp.142-60.
“Imperialism.” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Literature. Eds. Henry Schwartz and Sangeeta Ray. New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.
Review of On Anger: Race, Cognition, Narrative. MELUS 40.1 (Spring 2015): 206–208.
Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber. Science and Society. 78.4 (October 2014): 645–647.
“The American Dispossessed: Outsiders in Ferguson.” Counterpunch. August 21, 2014.
“Paths to Revolution.” With Barbara Foley. Mediations 27.1–2: (Fall/Spring 2013–2014): 411–418.
“Malala Yousefzai and the Modern Subject.” Counterpunch. October 11–13, 2013.
"Deflecting Crisis: Critiquing Capitalism’s Emancipation Narrative.” Works and Days. Special Issue on Culture and Crisis. 30.59/60 (2012): 349–360.
"Interrogating the New: Globalization, Endless War, and Postcolonial Theory." Cultural Critique. 62 (Spring 2006): 126-62.
"Transnational Transgression: Reading Mira Nair's Kama Sutra and Deepa Mehta's Fire in a Global Economy," South Asian Review 24.1 (Summer 2003): 180-201.
"It's All Within Your Reach: Nationalisms in the Age of the Global Economy," Cultural Logic, November 2002. Reprinted in Freeindiamedia.com.
"Postcolonial Longings." Modern Fiction Studies. 46.2 (Summer 2000): 496-500.
"Afrocentric Voices: Constructing Identities, (Dis)placing Difference." Race-ing Representation: Voice, History, and Sexuality, eds., Kostas and Linda Myrsiades. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998: 21-54.
“Black Reconstruction: A Reconsideration,” U Mass, Boston, June 2023.
“Border Rules,” Invited Talk, SUNY, Albany, April 2023.
“Transitions: The State, Abolition, and the Realm of Freedom” Institute of Culture and Society, University of Pennsylvania, June 2022.
“Abolition Democracy.” Keywords Conference, Modern Languages Association Radical Caucus, (zoom presentation). June 2022.
“Reading The Junius Pamphlet in Our Time.” UC Irvine (zoom presentation). June 2020.
“Intersections of Race and Class on the Frontlines.” Long Island University, Brooklyn, June 2019.
“Utopia and Revolutionary Dreaming.” Institute of Culture and Society. University of Illinois, June, Chicago, 2019.
Invited Speaker, “The Lenin/Roy Debates and the National Colonial Question.” SUNY, Albany, June 2018.