Amitava Kumar
Encyclopedia
Amitava Kumar is an India
n writer and journalist who is currently Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College
.
in the Indian state of Bihar
on March 17, 1963. He grew up close to his birthplace in Patna
, also in Bihar
. In India, Kumar earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science
from Hindu College
, Delhi University in 1984. He holds two master's degrees in Linguistics
and Literature
from Delhi University (1986) and Syracuse University
(1988) respectively. In 1993, he received his doctoral degree from the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota
.Currently, he lives with his family in Poughkeepsie, New York
.
at the New York Times called it a "perceptive and soulful — if at times academic — meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural and human repercussions." A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb was also judged the Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Asian American Literary Awards.
Husband of a Fanatic was an “Editors’ Choice” book at the New York Times; Bombay-London-New York was on the list of “Books of the Year” in The New Statesman (UK); and Passport Photos won an “Outstanding Book of the Year” award from the Myers Program for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. His novel Home Products was short-listed for India’s premier literary prize, the Vodafone Crossword Book Award
.
He was the scriptwriter for two documentary films: Dirty Laundry — about the national-racial politics of Indian South Africans — and Pure Chutney — about the descendants of indentured Indian laborers in Trinidad.
His academic writing and literary criticism has appeared in several journals, including Critical Inquiry
, Critical Quarterly
, College Literature, Race and Class, American Quarterly
, Rethinking Marxism
, Minnesota Review, Journal of Advanced Composition, Amerasia Journal
and Modern Fiction Studies
.
As a journalist, Kumar has regularly authored articles for newspapers and magazines across the world such as The New Statesman
, The Nation
, Caravan
, The Indian Express
and The Hindu
. In 2008, on Al Jazeera
's Riz Khan Show, Kumar was interviewed on the use of terror threats by governments to advance their own political agendas; the interview aired on the Al Jazeera English Network. In February 2011, Kumar interviewed famed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy
for Guernica Magazine
.
for three consecutive years. In addition, he has been awarded research fellowships from the NEH, Yale University
, SUNY-Stony Brook, Dartmouth College
, and University of California-Riverside. A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb was also judged the Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Asian American Literary Awards.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n writer and journalist who is currently Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
.
Early Life and Education
Kumar was born in the city of ArrahArrah
Arrah is a city and a municipal corporation in Bhojpur district in the state of Bihar, India. The actual name of Arrah is Ara but it was misspelt by the British and now corrected to Ara but still known as Arrah in many records. It is the district headquarters of Bhojpur district, located near the...
in the Indian state of Bihar
Bihar
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....
on March 17, 1963. He grew up close to his birthplace in Patna
Patna
Paṭnā , is the capital of the Indian state of Bihar and the second largest city in Eastern India . Patna is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world...
, also in Bihar
Bihar
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....
. In India, Kumar earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
from Hindu College
Hindu College, University of Delhi
Hindu College, Delhi is one of the oldest and well-known colleges in India, that was set up in 1899. It is under the affiliation of University of Delhi.It has seen enviable growth over the years. It offers undergraduate as well as postgraduate courses in Science, Humanities and Commerce...
, Delhi University in 1984. He holds two master's degrees in Linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and Literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
from Delhi University (1986) and Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
(1988) respectively. In 1993, he received his doctoral degree from the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
.Currently, he lives with his family in Poughkeepsie, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
Overview
Kumar is the author of Husband of a Fanatic (The New Press, 2005 and Penguin-India, 2004), Bombay-London-New York (Routledge and Penguin-India, 2002), and Passport Photos (University of California Press and Penguin-India, 2000). He has also written a book of poems, No Tears for the N.R.I. (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1996). The novel Home Products was published in early 2007 by Picador-India, and appeared in the US in August 2009 under the title Nobody Does the Right Thing. Early in 2009, Picador-India published his book Evidence of Suspicion; the book was later published by Duke University Press in August 2010 under the title, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb: A Writer’s Report on the Global War on Terror. In his review of this book, Dwight Garner (critic)Dwight Garner (critic)
Dwight Garner is an American journalist, now a literary critic for The New York Times. Prior to that he was senior editor at the New York Times Book Review, where he worked from 1999 to 2009...
at the New York Times called it a "perceptive and soulful — if at times academic — meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural and human repercussions." A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb was also judged the Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Asian American Literary Awards.
Husband of a Fanatic was an “Editors’ Choice” book at the New York Times; Bombay-London-New York was on the list of “Books of the Year” in The New Statesman (UK); and Passport Photos won an “Outstanding Book of the Year” award from the Myers Program for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. His novel Home Products was short-listed for India’s premier literary prize, the Vodafone Crossword Book Award
Vodafone Crossword Book Award
Vodafone Crossword Book Award is an Indian book award sponsored by Vodafone and Crossword Bookstores. It is India's biggest private sector award. The Award was instituted in 1998 with the intention of competing with The Booker Prize, Commonwealth Writers' Prize or The Pulitzer Prize.The award...
.
He was the scriptwriter for two documentary films: Dirty Laundry — about the national-racial politics of Indian South Africans — and Pure Chutney — about the descendants of indentured Indian laborers in Trinidad.
His academic writing and literary criticism has appeared in several journals, including Critical Inquiry
Critical Inquiry
Critical Inquiry is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by the University of Chicago Press. It is considered a leading journal within literary studies, and particularly in the field of critical theory....
, Critical Quarterly
Critical Quarterly
Critical Quarterly is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by Wiley-Blackwell. The editor-in-chief is Colin MacCabe.-Early Years:Critical Quarterly was established in 1958 by its first editors C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson...
, College Literature, Race and Class, American Quarterly
American Quarterly
American Quarterly is an academic journal and the official publication of the American Studies Association. The journal covers topics of both domestic and international concern in the United States and is considered a leading resource in the field of American studies. The current editor-in-chief is...
, Rethinking Marxism
Rethinking Marxism
Rethinking Marxism is a Marxist quarterly journal of economics, culture and society. It was launched in 1988 and since 2003 it has been published by Taylor and Francis....
, Minnesota Review, Journal of Advanced Composition, Amerasia Journal
Amerasia Journal
Amerasia Journal is an interdisciplinary academic journal covering Asian American studies. It was established in 1971 by the Asian American Studies Center Press at the University of California, Los Angeles....
and Modern Fiction Studies
Modern Fiction Studies
Modern Fiction Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1955 at Purdue University's Department of English, where it is still edited. It publishes general and themed issues on the topic of modernist and contemporary fiction using original research from literary scholars. It seeks...
.
As a journalist, Kumar has regularly authored articles for newspapers and magazines across the world such as The New Statesman
The New Statesman
The New Statesman is an award-winning British sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative government of the time...
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Caravan
Caravan
-Specific automobile models:*Dodge Caravan*Nissan Caravan*Opel Omega Caravan*Opel Astra Caravan*Chevrolet Caravan -Airplane models:*Cessna Caravan, a utility airplane*C-76 Caravan, an American 1940s medium military transport aircraft-Other:...
, The Indian Express
The Indian Express
The Indian Express is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. It is published in Mumbai by Indian Express Group. After Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split in 1999 among his family members into two with the southern editions taking the name The New Indian Express, while the old...
and The Hindu
The Hindu
The Hindu is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded and continuously published in Chennai since 1878. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 1.46 million copies as of December 2009. The enterprise employed over 1,600 workers and gross income reached $40...
. In 2008, on Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...
's Riz Khan Show, Kumar was interviewed on the use of terror threats by governments to advance their own political agendas; the interview aired on the Al Jazeera English Network. In February 2011, Kumar interviewed famed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays...
for Guernica Magazine
Guernica Magazine
Guernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is a biweekly online site that publishes art and photography, fiction, and poetry, from around the world, along with nonfiction such as letters from abroad, investigative pieces and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy...
.
Books
- A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Bomb, a non-fiction book about the war on terror, and the literary as well as artistic responses to it.
- Home Products
- Husband of a Fanatic, book on writing and religious violence.
- Bombay-London-New York, literary memoir cum critical report on Indian fiction
- Passport Photos, multi-genre book on immigration and postcoloniality.
- No Tears for the N.R.I., a book of poems
Edited Works
- Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate, edited volume of essays.
- World Bank Literature, edited volume of essays on global economies and literature.
- The Humour and the Pity, edited volume of essays on V.S. Naipaul.
- Poetics/Politics: Radical Aesthetics for the Classroom, edited volume of essays on radical aesthetics and pedagogy.
- Class Issues: Pedagogy, Cultural Studies, and the Public Sphere, edited volume of essays on radical teaching.
Forewords and Introductory Notes
- Where the Wild Frontiers Are, by Manan Ahmed.
- “Duty-Free Indians,” a Foreword to Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and their Passage from India to America by S. Mitra Kalita.
- “In Class,” a Foreword to Class and Its Others, edited by J.K. Gibson-Graham.
Awards and Fellowships
Kumar has been a Fiction Fellow at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, a Barach Fellow at the Wesleyan Writers Festival, and has received awards from the South Asian Journalists AssociationSouth Asian Journalists Association
The South Asian Journalists Association was founded in 1994 in New York City. South Asia refers to India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Nepal. The current president is Jigar Mehta, Previously a Video Journalist for the New York Times.SAJA celebrates its 15th anniversary July...
for three consecutive years. In addition, he has been awarded research fellowships from the NEH, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, SUNY-Stony Brook, Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, and University of California-Riverside. A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb was also judged the Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Asian American Literary Awards.