Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, commonly known as R. Radhakrishnan, is Chancellor's Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Comparative literature

Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...

 at the University of California, Irvine

University of California, Irvine

The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...

, and is considered one of the leading postcolonial theorists and literary critics in the United States. He was born on October 28, 1949, in Sirkali, a village in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Radhakrishnan is also noted as a translator and poet of Tamil as well as a master of English and English literary criticism. He was initially educated in Madras and earned his PhD from Binghamton University

Binghamton University

Binghamton University, also formally called State University of New York at Binghamton, , is a public research university in the State of New York. The University is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York system...

.

Teaching career

• Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine
  University of California, Irvine
  The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
  
  , 2004-
• Chair, Department of Asian American Studies
  Asian American Studies
  Asian American Studies is an academic discipline which studies the experience of people of Asian ancestry in America. Closely related to other Ethnic Studies disciplines such as African American Studies, Latino/a Studies, and Native American Studies, Asian American Studies critically examines the...
  
  , University of California, Irvine
  University of California, Irvine
  The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
  
  , 2004-06.
• Affiliate Faculty, Women’s Studies, University of California, Irvine, 2004-
• Steering Committee, African-American Studies, University of California, Irvine, 2004-
• Member, Advisory Board, International Center for Writing and Translation, University of California, Irvine, 2004–07
• Core Member, Critical Theory
  Critical theory
  Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
  
   Emphasis, University of California, Irvine
  University of California, Irvine
  The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
  
  , 2004-
• Core Faculty, Ph.D. Program in Culture and Theory, University of California, Irvine
  University of California, Irvine
  The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
  
  , 2007-
• Professor, Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1993-2004.
• Associate Faculty, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1984-2004.
• Associate Professor (tenured), Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1990-1993.
• Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1984-1990.
• Visiting Lecturer, Department of English, University of California, Santa Barbara
  University of California, Santa Barbara
  The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
  
  , 1983-84.
• Teaching Assistant and Adjunct Lecturer, Department of English, SUNY-Binghamton, 1978-83.
• Assistant Professor, Department of English, Madras Christian College
  Madras Christian College
  The Madras Christian College, commonly known as MCC, is a liberal arts and sciences college in Madras , India. Founded in 1837, MCC is one of Asia's oldest extant colleges. Currently, the college is affiliated to the University of Madras, but functions as an autonomous institution from its campus...
  
  , Madras University, 1972-78.

Education

• Ph.D., English, State University of New York Binghamton, May 1983. The Post-modern Context and the Language of Difference: An Essay In Emergence. Dissertation Director: Professor William V. Spanos.
• M.A. English, Madras University, Madras, India, May 1971.
• B.A. Economics, Madras University, Madras, India, May 1969.

History, the Human, and the World Between

History, the Human, and the World Between brings Radhakrishnan closer than ever to a more conventional unified book, being divided between three long chapters and a multipurpose introduction, yet it remains essentially a collection of essays. As well as a critical engagement with many of the most powerful influences on his thought, this book marks somewhat of a departure for Radhakrishnan, a move away from poststructuralist methodology and towards (or perhaps back to) phenomenology, albeit in an updated, modified form. In this sense, being an extended meditation on "between-ness" in all its senses refracted through the lens of phenomenology and critically juxtaposing the works of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

, Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

, Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...

, Edward Said

Edward Said

Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...

, Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

, Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...

, Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

, David Harvey

David Harvey

David Harvey is the name of:*David Harvey *David Harvey , geographer and social theorist*David Harvey , American luthier...

, and Ranajit Guha

Ranajit Guha

Ranajit Guha is a historian of South Asia who was greatly influential in the Subaltern Studies group, and was the editor of several of the group's early anthologies. He migrated from India to the UK in the 1960s, and currently lives in Vienna, Austria.His Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency...

, in spite of the elaborate structure of its arguments and its familiar density, History, the Human, and the World can be fairly said to have a more cohesive unifying theme and critical agenda than Radhakrishnan's earlier books, and to represent an exciting new phase in his original contribution to postcolonial theory and critical theory generally.

Introduction

The introduction to History, the Human, and the World Between most importantly serves to not only set up the subsequent three long chapters that make up the bulk of the book, but to explain Radhakrishnan's choice in reemphasizing the central importance of phenomenology in his work and worldview. He explains that his attention is now focused on the tension between a series of potentially contradictory and possibly mutually invalidating imperatives: "the need to address a general readership on such broad issues as history, the world, and the predicament of the human subject caught between the past and the present, between knowing and being, between phenomenology and discursive systems, between nature and anthropocentrism, between a potential universality and a world structured in dominance." It is the subject of the "between" that turns his attention to phenomenology as opposed to poststructuralism, and which informs the essays in the book.

Radhakrishnan argues that phenomenology offers a way out of the irreconcilable "theory versus history debates." Proponents of history claim high theory discounts and is incapable of dealing with "real" history, whereas theorists claim that through their "scrupulous and critical attention to the epistemological subject" they have already "taken care of history." Radhakrishnan argues that Edward Said's career can be read as an index of this crisis, particularly his problematic embrace of humanism in the face of an overwhelming poststructuralist critique of its inadequacies. He also cites Ranajit Guha's embrace of Tagore's poetry as an alternative location of the historically real as opposed to the discipline of historiography as another instance of the crisis between theory and history.

As an alternative, Radhakrishnan proposes that "Phenomenology in general opens up exciting possibilities of considering the same phenomenon simultaneously from a variety of discrete but interrelated registers: the political, the aesthetic, the ethical, the individual, and the collective." Phenomenology brings us back to the space in between these binaries or categories, to the space between "the 'I am' and the 'I think' poles of human subjectivity," and he argues that, "the only place in which the human subject dwells is between" different poles, binaries, categories, spaces, identities, imperatives, experiences, and other forms of subjectivity. Radhakrishnan is drawn to phenomenology because it invariably forces the issues, since "it becomes incumbent on the phenomenologically inflected human subject or cogito to raise the issue of its accountability to itself, to existence, and to nature along multiple axes..." A purely poststructuralist methodology is ultimately insufficient because "systems matter and thought matters because life matters and living matters, and not the other way around."

The payoff is that "it is possible for a politically committed and ideologically partisan phenomenologist to make meaningful differentiations, for example, between temporality and historicity and between pre-discursive possibility and discursive or official actuality." Because it opens up this in-between space, "a reconfigured phenomenology has a crucial role to play in the ongoing conversations between history and theory, between objectivism and subjectivism." It is this project of trying to reconfigure and revivify phenomenology, in the context of what he describes as the history-theory stalemate and as a key to the topography of the spaces "in between," that defines the three essays that make up the bulk of the book. For Radhakrishnan, the turn away from poststructuralism, at least to some extent, and towards a reconstructed form of phenomenology suggests the re-opening of foreclosed spaces that define the essence of both individual and collective human subjectivity.

Between Identity and Location: The Politics of Theory

How can we handle the unevenness between the West and the Rest? How inevitable is the binary logic of winners and losers? How can theory help us resolve our ethical and political problems? Can theory help us think beyond the “winner talks all” model by articulating strong connections between ethics and politics? This major intervention into debates about the postcolonial and the global proposes that theory should embody unevenness. Radhakrishnan’s thought-provoking engagement with theorists and writers from around the world will fascinate readers across a wide range of disciplines.

Theory in an Uneven World

Theory in an Uneven World, Blackwell 2003. Reprinted in India by Blackwell-Atlantic, 2003.

Diasporic Mediations

Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location, University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

His first collection of essays, Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location, is, like all of Radhakrishnan's books, a collection of loosely connected essays built around a set of themes. As its title suggests, Diasporic Mediations is most closely associated with the relationship between geographical and cultural location and individual and collective subjectivity. The doubling throughout the essays alternates between home and diaspora, individual and group, self and other, intellectuals and masses, and divided subjectivities in both individuals and collectivities. Radhakrishnan consistently juxtaposes concepts such as "here" and "there," "us" and "them," "self" and "other." Most of the essays in the book deal with aspects of how to reconcile the philosophical and intellectual problems posed by contemporary critical theory

Critical theory

Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...

, and especially postcolonial theory, with the imperative of remaining an engaged public intellectual and how to negotiate between competing subjective positions both with the self and within affiliational constituencies and communities.

Towards an Effective Intellectual

In "Towards an Effective Intellectual," Radhakrishnan challenges the idea that critical theory has lost any ability to connect with practical politics because of the impossibility of representation and the inadmissibility of stable identity categories that can produce coherent constituencies. He begins by suggesting that the Rainbow Coalition and the two Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns of the 1980s demonstrated a practical application of the implications of critical theory about the relationship between the individual and group affiliations, and between identity and difference. Radhakrishnan illustrates his argument mainly by comparing praxis as proposed by Michel Foucault versus that of Antonio Gramsci.

He credits Foucault for championing subjugated knowledges and critiquing the role of intellectuals in reinforcing social stratification, and class and other forms of oppression. However, he agrees with Edward Said that Foucault does not go far enough because he does not interrogate his own position and the broader question of who is speaking as opposed to what is being said. Foucault, he concludes, cannot have a macropolitics because he is attacking his own location as an elite Eurocentric intellectual but cannot be anything other than that; he cannot be working class, subjugated, oppressed or colonized. Radhakrishnan contrasts Foucault's assertion that intellectual and other forms of leadership are by definition invalid and "no more," with the history of organic and "noncoercive" movement leaders whose authentic and mutual connection with constituencies "makes the act of representation genuine and historically real." And, by denying the possibility of representation, Foucault actually forecloses the prospect of "the masses speaking for themselves," or for the actual emergence of subjugated knowledges.

Radhakrishnan argues that while Foucault's "destabilization of the uni-vocal subject remains philosophical" and never becomes political, Gramsci is continuously interrogating the relationship of the individual to the group. Gramsci thereby accords subjugated groups and individuals historical and political agency, although affiliations are always shifting and unstable. It is these shifting, organic political affiliations that for Gramsci permit the emergence of a properly engaged intellectual that can actually represent a real constituency. Indeed, for Gramsci, intellectual engagement is essential to mass politics in any form rather than antithetical to it as Foucault would suggest.

Radhakrishnan, somewhat uncomfortably, ultimately sides more with Gramsci: "the problem faced by an entire range of emerging groups is indeed one of organization." Therefore leadership and intellectuals are, indeed, required. Nonetheless, he recognizes the problem of hegemony such roles entail. Radhakrishnan argues that constituencies can avoid crises of hegemony by recognizing, as he says the Rainbow Coalition did, "difference in identity" and "identity in difference." Because any constituency is "made up of heterogeneous elements... that seek common cause," hegemony and political displacement are always potential consequences of this inbuilt contradiction. Radhakrishnan therefore argues that praxis should always be "undertaken in the name of the weakest (the most oppressed) element within the formation." He closes by suggesting that "the most productive question is, How can we read each history or category in terms of the other?," in order to constantly undermine dominant formations. For this, he suggests “mixing-in” Foucault’s “post-political" critique of representation with Gramsci’s insistence on the need for intellectual praxis and political leadership.

Forthcoming Books

• Edward Said: A Dictionary, Blackwell, 2010.
• When is the Political? A collection of essays.

Books Edited

• Theory as Variation, Ed. R. Radhakrishnan et al. Pencraft International, Delhi, India, 2007.
• Transnational South Asians: The Making of a Neo-Diaspora, co-edited with Susan Koshy, Oxford University Press, July 2008.
• Theory after Derrida, Co-edited with Kailash Bairal, Routledge India, Spring 2009.

Radhakrishnan English-Tamil and Tamil-English Translations

• Between Identity and Location: The Cultural Politics of Theory, and Theory in an Uneven World, translated into Tamil, forthcoming, Uyirmai Publishers, Chennai, India.
• Some People in Some Situations, an English translation of the Sahitya Academy Award (the equivalent of the National Book award) winning Tamil novel by Jayakanthan, forthcoming, Orient Longman, India, Spring 2009.
• In Tamil: A volume of poems, Negizzchhi Oru Nigazcchi Alla (Moved, but not in Time), Chennai, India, January 2004.
• A second volume of Radhakrishnan's poems in Tamil is reportedly also in progress.
• Six translations of Radhakrishnan's Tamil poems into English: :“Today,” :“Her Loveliness,” :“The Terrorist,” :“The Letter,” :“Determination,” and :“The Word of the Gecko” were published in :Masthead, Issue 10, 2006.

Journals Edited

• “Desh-Videsh,” Co-edited with Ketu Katrak, a Special Issue of The Massachusetts Review
  The Massachusetts Review
  The Massachusetts Review is a national literary journal founded in 1959 by a group of professors from Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst....
  
   on South Asian Expatriate Writing and Art, Vol. XXIX, No.4, Winter 1988-89.

Academic Honors

• Distinguished Fellowship, CSTEP (Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy), Bangalore, India, December 2008
• Research Associate, Somatechnics Center, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, 2004-.
• Fulbright Teaching Award, Chennai University, India, July 2003-Dec 2003.
• Research Fellow, Society for the Humanities, [Cornell University], 2002-03.
• Awarded a Gold Medal by the Friendship Forum of India in recognition of achievements in the field, 2002.
• Senior Visiting Fellow, The International Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Fall 1996.
• Biographical entries in a number of national and international Who’s Who directories.
• Fellowship, Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 1989-90.
• Awarded the Lilly Fellowship for teaching, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1987-88.
• Faculty Fellow, the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1986–88, and 2001.
• Distinguished Dissertation Award, Department of English, SUNY-Binghamton, 1983.
• Participant, Summer Session of the School of Criticism and Theory, Northwestern University, 1982.
• Awarded the Dissertation Year Internship, Office of the Provost, SUNY-Binghamton, 1981-82.

Journal Publications

• “Theory, Democracy, and the Public Intellectual,” invited essay, PMLA, 2010.
• “Why Compare?” invited essay for a special issue of New Literary History, Eds. Susan Stanford Friedman and Rita Felski, Fall 2009.
• “Dear Obama,” in a special issue of Politics and Culture, ed. Amitava Kumar, January 2009.
• “Obama, Race, and Visibility,” in a special issue of The Journal of Visual Culture, August 2009.
• “Interview with R. Radhakrishnan,” Jed Murr and Yasir Munif, text under preparation,” to be published in Wagadu or Jouvert.
• “Interview with R. Radhakrishnan,” Mina Karavantas, Synthesis, Spring 2009.
• “Is Freedom Academic?” in a special issue of Works & Days on “Academic Freedom,” 2008-09, Vols. 26 & 27: 501-518.
• “Grievable Life, Accountable Theory,” boundary2,vol.35.1, Spring 2008: 67-84.
• “Is Translation a Mode?” European Journal of English Studies, Vol. 12.1, April 2008: 15-31.
• “Ethnic Studies in the Age of Transnationalism,” Forum: Conference Debates, PMLA, May 2007, Vol. 122, No. 3: 808-810.
• “Between Living or Telling: Ethnicity in the Age of Transnationalism,” ADE Bulletin, No. 143, Fall 2007: 18-25.
• “Edward Said’s Literary Humanism,” special issue of Cultural Critique 67, on Edward Said and After: Toward a New Humanism, Fall 2007: 13-42.
• “Race and Double-Consciousness,” in a special issue of Works and Days, Ed. Lingyan Yang, Spring 2006 24, Vols. 1 and 2: 45-67.
• “Notes on ‘Translatability in an Uneven World’,” Translation Today, Vol. 2: 2, October 2005: 12-24. (Reprint)
• “An Intellectual Portrait of Edward Said’s Humanism, Criticism, and Politics: Interview with R. Radhakrishnan,” in Studies in the Humanities, Fall 2006: 32-62.
• “When is Democracy Political?” boundary2, Fall 2006: 103-122.
• “Revisiting Minority Theory,” special issue of The New Centennial Review, Ed. Anthony Shiu, Vol 6. No.2., Fall 2006: 39-55.
• “Globality is not Worldliness,” in a special issue of Gamma: Journal of Theory and Criticism on “Comparative Literature and Global Studies,” Eds. Antonis Balasopoulos and Stephanos Stephanides, Volume 13, 2005: 183-198.
• “Reading Said: Between Worldliness and Globality,” Journal of Contemporary Thought, 2003 Winter: 167-74
• “Edward W. Said: In Memoriam,” Frontline, October 24, 2003: 105-08; republished in the Culture and Politics special issue on Edward Said, ed. Amitava Kumar.
• "Derivative Discourses and the Problem of Signification," European Legacy, Vol. 7, No 6. December 2002: 783-795.
• “We are the World, but Who are We, and How do We Know?" Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 14: No. 3, 2002: 94-110.
• "Globalization, Desire, and the Politics of Representation," special issue of Comparative Literature, Fall 2001: Vol. 53. No.4: 315-332, and in a collection of essays, Globalization and the Humanities, ed. David Leiwei Li, University of Hong Kong Press, 2004: 59-78, 286-87, 309-11.
• “Adjudicating Hybridity, Coordinating Betweenness,” Jouvert, Winter 2000.
• “Toward an Eccentric Cosmopolitanism,” Positions, Vol 3.3, Winter 1995, pp. 814–821.
• “Edward Said, “Culture and Imperialism: A symposium,” Social Text 40, Fall 1994, pp. 15–20.
• “Postmodernism and the Rest of the World,” Organization, Vol.1.2 (October 94), pp. 305–340.
• “Postcoloniality and the Boundaries of Identity," Callaloo, Vol. 16.4, 1993, pp. 750–771. Republished in Identities: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality, eds. Linda Martin Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta, Blackwell, pp. 312–29.
• “Rethinking the Political”, Rethinking Marxism, 5.2, Summer, 1992, pp. 129–140.
• “Ethnicity in an Age of Diaspora,” Transition 54, November, 1991, pp. 104–115.
• “The Changing Subject and the Politics of Theory,” Differences, Summer 1990. Vol. 2.2, pp. 126–52.
• Introduction (with Ketu Katrak) to DESH-VIDESH, a special issue of The Massachusetts Review, Spring, 1989, pp. 580–582.
• “Culture as Common Ground: Ethnicity and Beyond, MELUS, Summer 1987, Vol.14, No.2. pp. 5-19.
• “Ethnic Identity and Post-Structuralist Differance”, Cultural CRITIQUE, Spring 1987, pp. 199-220. Also republished in The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse, Eds. Abdul Jan Mohamed and David Lloyd, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 50-71.
• “To Be: A Foucauldian Itinerary,” Works & Days, Fall 1986, pp. 51–77.
• “The Singular Event and the End of Logocentrism,” boundary2, Fall 1983, pp. 33–60.

Publications (in Books/ Collection of Essays)

“The State of the Humanities,” in a collection on the Humanities, Ed. Mohan Ramanan, India, Spring 2010.

“Heterotopic Sovereignty Ambai’s short story, A Kitchen in the corner of a house,” in a collection of essays, ed. Sumathi Ramaswamy, Pencraft India, December 2008.

“Is Translation a Mode?” reprint, in Theory after Derrida: essays in critical praxis, eds. Kailash C. Baral and R. Radhakrishnan, Routledge, 2009: 280-301.

“Afterword: Globalization, or the Ontology of Capital,” in Global Babel: Questions of Discourse and Communication in a Time of Globalization, Eds. Samir Dayal and Margueritte Murphy, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007: 321-333.

“Academic Freedom: What is it About?” in a collection, ed. Malini Schueller-Johar, Duke University Press, Summer 2009.

“Afterword: Diasporic Futures,” collection of essays, ed. Parmita Kapadia, Summer 2009.

“The intellectual in the Age of Post-Humanism,” in a collection, Edward Said and Jacques Derrida, eds. Mina Karavantas and Nina Morgan, Spring 2009.

“Revisionism and the Subject of History,” in The Postcolonial and the Global, eds. Revathy Krishnaswamy and John Hawley, University of Minnesota Press, Spring 2008: 69-81.

“Edward Said and the Politics of Humanism,” in Edward Said: The Call to Freedom, University of California Press, Spring 2010.

“Between Nation and World: Gandhi and Tagore,” in Forms of Knowledge in India: Critical Revaluations, Eds. Suresh Raval et al., Pencraft International, India, 2008: 326-357.

“”Why Translate?” in Ngugi wa Thiong O in the Americas, Ed. Tim Reiss, Fall 2009.

“Teaching Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter,” in a MLA collection on the teaching of African Literature in the United States, Ed. Gaurav Desai, MLA publications, Spring 2010.

“Why History, Why Now?” in Colonialism, Modernity, Theory, eds. CT Indira et al., Pencraft India, Fall 2009.

“Alterity, Technology, and Human Nature,” in Digital Culture Unplugged: Probing the native cyborg’s multiple locations, Ed. Nalini Rajan, Routledge, 2007: 55-68.

“Indian Culture: And Now A Renaissance,” in A Passage to New India, Eds. V.S. Arunachalam and Ashok Sarath, Center for Study of Science Technology and Policy, Bangalore, India, 2006: 45-46.

“Diaspora, Hybridity, Pedagogy,” in Peripheral Centres, Central Peripheries: India and its Diaspora(s), Ed. Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn, with Vera Alexander, Transcultural Anglophone Studies, Volume 1., LIT VERLAG, Berlin, 2006: 113-127.

“Translatability in an Uneven World,” in http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=276931 Rethinking Modernity], Eds. Santosh Gupta, Prafulla C. Kar, and Parul Dave Mukherjee, New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2005: 82-89.

“Samskara: A Reading,” in U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara: A Critical Reader, Eds. Kailash C. Baral, D. Venkat Rao, and Sura P. Rath, Pencraft International: New Delhi, 2005: 135-50.

“Ethicizing Economics, or for that matter, any other discourse,” in Postcolinialism meets Economics, eds. Eiman O. Zein-Elabdin and S. Charusheela, Routledge, January 2004, pp. 207–12.

“Conjunctural Identities, Academic Adjacencies,” in Orientations: Mapping Studies in the Asian Diaspora, eds. Kandice Chuh and Karen Shimakawa, Duke University Press, 2001, pp. 249–263.

“Aesthetic Truth: Production or ‘Letting Be,” in Maps and Mirrors: Topologies of Art and Politics, ed. Steve Martinot, Northwestern University Press, 2001, pp. 304–318.

“PostModernism and the Rest of the World,” in The Pre-Occupation of Post-Colonial Studies, Eds. Fawzia Afzal Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Duke U Press, 2000: 37-70.

“Is the Ethnic Authentic in the Diaspora?" in The State of Asian America: Activism and resistance in the 1990s, Ed. Karin Aguilar-San Juan, South End Press, 1994, pp. 219–33. Republished in Defining Travel: Diverse Visions, ed. Susan L. Roberson, University of Mississippi Press, 2001, pp. 200–210, and in Theorizing Diaspora, eds. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, Blackwell, pp. 119–31.

“Cultural Theory and the Politics of Location,” in Views Beyond the Border Country: Raymond Willians and Cultural Politics, Eds. Leslie G. Roman and Dennis Dworkin, Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1993, pp. 350–53.

“Nationalism, Gender and the Narrative of Identity,” in Nationalisms and Sexualities, Eds. Andrew Parker, Doris Sommer, Mary Russo and Patricia Yaeger, Routledge, 1992, pp. 77–95.

“Canonicity and Theory: Toward a Post-Structuralist Pedagogy," in Theory/Pedagogy/Politics, Eds. Donald Morton and Mas’ud Zavarzadeh, University of Illinois Press, 1991, pp. 112–135.

“Toward an effective Intellectual: Foucault or Gramsci?” in Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics, Ed. Bruce Robbins, University of Minnesota Press, 1990, pp. 57–99.

“Post Structuralist Politics: Towards a Theory of Coalition,” in Jameson/Postmodernism/Critique, ed. Douglas Kellener, Maisonnevue Press, 1990, pp. 57–99.

“Negotiating Subject Positions in an Uneven World,” in Feminism and Institutions, Ed. Linda Kauffman, Blackwell, 1989, pp. 276–90.

”Feminist Historiography and post-structuralist thought: Intersections and Departures,” in The Difference Within: Feminism and Critical Theory, Eds. Elizabeth Meese and Alice Parker, John Benjamins, 1989, pp. 187–203.

“Reality, the Text, and Post-Modern Representation: A Question in Theory, or Theory in Question,” in Postmodern Fiction: A Bio-bibliographic Guide, Ed. Larry McCafferey, Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 229–242.

“Ideology Versus 'Ideology’: Towards a Post-structuralist Ethic," in Culture/Criticism/Ideology, Proceedings of the Northeastern University Center for Literary Studies, 1986: Volume 4, PP. 75–78.

Specializations and Teaching Interests

• Critical Theory
• Asian American literature
  Asian American literature
  Although immigrants from Asia and Americans of Asian descent have been writing in the United States since the 19th century, Asian American literature as a category of writing only came into existence in the early 1970s...
  
   and Theory
• Postcoloniality
• Poststructuralism
• Postmodernism
  Postmodernism
  Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
  
  
• Marxism
  Marxism
  Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
  
   and Postmarxism
• Cultural Studies
  Cultural studies
  Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
  
  

• The Modern Novel
• Global English
• Twentieth Century Literature
• Diasporic and Ethnic Literatures and Theories
• Feminisms and Feminist Theories
• Nationalisms and Transnationalisms

At the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Graduate)

• Ideology, Text, Representation
• American Romanticism
  Romanticism
  Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
  
  
• History of Critical Theory
  Critical theory
  Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
  
  
• Contemporary Critical Theory
• Phenomenology, Structuralism
  Structuralism
  Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
  
  , Poststructuralism
• Counter-Memory
• Readings in postmodernism
  Postmodernism
  Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
  
  
• Postcoloniality

• Poststructuralism and Postcoloniality: A Relationship
• Readings in Nationalism
  Nationalism
  Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
  
  
• Nationalism and Postcoloniality
• Introduction to Marxist and Post-Marxist Theory
• Foucault
  Michel Foucault
  Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
  
   and Said
  Edward Said
  Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
  
  
• Literature, Theory, and the Call of the Other
• Hybridity
  Hybridity
  Hybridity refers in its most basic sense to mixture. The term originates from biology and was subsequently employed in linguistics and in racial theory in the nineteenth century. Its contemporary uses are scattered across numerous academic disciplines and is salient in popular culture...
  
   and Representation
  Representation
  Representation can refer to:* Representation , one's ability to influence the political process* Representative democracy* Representation, a type of diplomatic mission...
  
  

At UC-Irvine (Graduate)

Cultures of Globalization

Globalization

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

Literature, Theory, and the Call of the Other

Translation Theory

Humanism

Humanism

Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

, Posthumanism

Posthumanism

Posthumanism or post-humanism is a term with five definitions:#Antihumanism: a term applied to a number of thinkers opposed to the project of philosophical anthropology....

Ontology

Ontology

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...

 and the Politics of Community

At the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Undergraduate)

The Modern Novel

The Political Novel

Practical Criticism

Literary Criticism

Madness and Disorder in Literature

Cultural Criticism (Honors)

History of Literary Theory

Literary theory

Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...

American Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

What is Minority Literature?

Literature between Worlds

Contemporary Critical Theory

Postcoloniality

Nation and Narration

Nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

 and Literature

Man and Woman in Literature

Society and Literature (Honors)

The Artist as Intellectual

Intellectual

An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...

Courses Taught at UC-Irvine (Undergraduate)

Literature Between Worlds

Asian American Cultural Theory

Theorizing Diaspora

Diaspora

A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...

The Asian American and the African American Novel

Transnationalism-Globalization-Diaspora

Democracy and Minority Discourse

Transnationalism: Race, Gender, Sexuality

Democracy and Minority Politics

Home and Away: Literature, Culture, and Theory

Literature and Nationalism

Aesthetic Theory

Aesthetic Theory

Aesthetic Theory is a book by the 20th century German philosopher Theodor Adorno which was culled from drafts written between 1961 and 1969, ultimately published posthumously in 1970...

Courses and Seminars taught outside the Home Institution

Theory After Derrida, Summer Critical Theory Faculty Workshop, India, 2005

Edward Said, Humanism, Post-Humanism, Summer Critical Theory Faculty Workshop, India, 2006.

Cosmopolitanism: Kant, Derrida, Gandhi, and Tagore, Summer Critical Theory Workshop, India, 2007.

Postcoloniality and Poststructuralism, graduate seminars, Chennai University, India, July-Dec ’03.

The University as Home, Seminar, Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 (Spring 2003)

Narrative as Negotiation, Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

, New Brunswick, NJ (Spring 1990)

At the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Director of eight completed dissertations so far and currently directing other doctoral theses. Two of the dissertations completed under his supervision have been published: The Oppositional Criticisms of Frank Lentricchia and Edward Said (Xu Ben), Peter Lang, 1992, and Teaching the Postmodern (Brenda Marshall), Routledge, 1992.

Committee member for over 50 doctoral thesis candidates from the following departments: English, Comparative Literature, German, Communication Studies, School of Management, Political Science, Economics, Anthropology, and the School of Education. Also member of doctoral committees of students from other universities: national and international.

At UC-Irvine

Member of 15 doctoral and pre-doctoral committees of students from English, French, East Asian Studies, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Film and Visual Studies. Currently directing two doctoral dissertations.

Committee Experience

Chair, Placement Committee, Department of English, 2009-

Placement Officer, department of English, 2009-

Chair, Asian American Studies, 2004-06.

Co-chair, with Gabrielle Schwaab, Senior Postcolonial Theorist Search Committee, Department of Comparative Literature, UC-Irvine, 2005-06.

Curriculum Committee, Asian American Studies

Asian American Studies

Asian American Studies is an academic discipline which studies the experience of people of Asian ancestry in America. Closely related to other Ethnic Studies disciplines such as African American Studies, Latino/a Studies, and Native American Studies, Asian American Studies critically examines the...

, 2004-08.

Core Committee, Critical Theory Emphasis, UC-Irvine, 2004–07.

Advisory Committee, International Center for Translation Studies, UC-Irvine.

Steering Committee, African American Studies

African American studies

African American studies is a subset of Black studies or Africana studies. It is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of African Americans...

 Program, UC-Irvine.

Member, Search Committee, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2003–04

Fulbright International Program, Selection Committee, 2003–04.

Member, Faculty Senate Councils for General Education and Graduate Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Spring 2002-

Member, Massachusetts Cultural Council Literature Panel.

Advisory Board, South-Asian Young Writers Program, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1999-

Advisory Board, Asian-American Certificate Program, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1999-

Search Committee, English Department, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, Fall 2000

Chair, Search Committee, English Department, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1992-1993.

Personnel Committee, English Department, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1991-1993.

Graduate Studies Committee, English Department, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1987-1989.

Search Committee, English Department, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1985-87.

The Provost Committee for University Lectures, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst 1987-88.

Planning Committee and Advisory Board, Center for the study of Contemporary Culture, Search Committee, English Department, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1986-90.

Professional Honors and Experience

Interviewed in Tamil on JAYA TV

Jaya TV

Jaya TV is one of the major Tamil language satellite television channels based in Chennai, India. Jaya TV is one of the early Tamil channels to entertain the Tamil audiences spread across Globe....

, Chennai, Sep 04.

Chair, Selection Committee for the Adjudication of Book Awards in Asian American Cultural Studies.

Member, Advisory Board, SPARROW, a feminist-activist cultural organization based in Mumbai, India.

Founding member, with Professor Ananta Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies of the Group for Research in Emerging Epistemologies.

Member, Advisory Board, The South Asian Secular Humanist Project, Department of Asia-Pacific Studies and the Project for Peace Initiatives, Chennai University, India.

Resource Person for a number of US Education Foundation in India conferences and Workshops in India, July–December 2003.

Member of two National Committees in charge of selecting visiting Fulbright scholars and teachers, 2003.

Advisory Board, Viewing Race, The National Resources Video Project, 1997-2000.

Advisory Board, Massachusetts Council for the Arts.

Nominated to the MLA Executive Council.

Editorial board: boundary 2

Boundary 2

boundary 2 is an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies, theory, libertarian politics and literary criticism. In the 1970s and 1980s it was one of the primary venues for poststructuralist literary theory in the United States. It is edited primarily at the University of Pittsburgh and...

, jouvert, Culture and Communication, The Boston Politics and Culture Group, Desi Scenes: Journal of South Asian Cinema, Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Feminist Thought, and Journal of Contemporary Thought, Modern Fiction Studies, Cross-Roads.

Member of the Delegate Assembly, MLA

Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...

.

Nominating Committee, Society for the Study of Narrative Literature.

Referee: PMLA College English, College Literature, Focuses, Signs, MELUS, and boundary 2.

Interviewed on Radio Bandung on “Meaning of Black in Political Coalitions.”

Regular Reader and Consultant for the following Presses: Blackwell, Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

, Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

, 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...

, SUNY, University of California

University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

, Princeton

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, Columbia

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, Cornell, Stanford, University Of Massachusetts

University of Massachusetts

This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...

, the National Research Council of Canada

National Research Council of Canada

The National Research Council is an agency of the Government of Canada which conducts scientific research and development.- History :...

, ACLS

ACLS

ACLS may refer to:* Access control list, a list of permissions attached to an object in computer security* Acrocallosal syndrome, a rare genetic disease...

, Pennsylvania State University

Pennsylvania State University

The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...

, Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

, University of Mississippi

University of Mississippi

The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...

 and the University Of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

.

Featured Interview in CONTACT

Contact

Contact may refer to:-Social interaction:* Contact , a person who can offer help in achieving goals* Contact * First contact , an initial meeting of two cultures...

: A University of Massachusetts Publication.

External Referee for more than 50 Tenure and Promotion Cases.

Membership and Professional Associations

Modern Language Association

Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...

Society for Critical Exchange

International Association of Philosophy and Literature

Group for the study of Colonial Discourse

Society for the study of Narrative Literature

Teachers for a Democratic Culture

Association of Asian American Studies

American Comparative Literature Association

American Comparative Literature Association

The American Comparative Literature Association is the principal learned society in the United States for scholars whose work connects several different literary traditions and cultures or that examines the premises of cross-cultural literary study...

Poetry

• Poems in a number of Indian journals and magazines and anthologies in India.
• Radio and Television appearances: Numerous Poetry Readings, Doordarshan
  DoorDarshan
  Doordarshan is an Indian public service broadcaster, a division of Prasar Bharati. It is one of the largest broadcasting organizations in India in terms of the infrastructure of studios and transmitters. Recently, it has also started Digital Terrestrial Transmitters. On September 15, 2009,...
  
   and All India Radio
  All India Radio
  All India Radio , officially known since 1956 as Akashvani , is the radio broadcaster of India and a division of Prasar Bharati. Established in 1936, it is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster. All India Radio is one of the largest radio networks...
  
  .

Textbooks

• Edited an abridged version of George Elliot’s, with introduction and Notes, Orient Longmans, 1976.

Papers and Talks

• Lecture workshop on Aesthetic theory
  Aesthetic Theory
  Aesthetic Theory is a book by the 20th century German philosopher Theodor Adorno which was culled from drafts written between 1961 and 1969, ultimately published posthumously in 1970...
  
  , the Summer School of the Theory-Praxis Institute, Pune, India, July 2010.
• Lecture, Department of English, SUNY-Buffalo, Spring 2010.
• Keynote lecture at the Conference on Global Knowledges, University of Wisconsin-Madison, February, 2010.
• “Re-reading the Sonia Sotomayor controversy,” plenary lecture at the International conference on Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Trivandrum, India, December 2009.
• Lecture, “The Knowledge Game: Who is Playing Whom?” CSTEP-Bangalore, India, September 2009.
• Lecture on “The Return of the Simulacrum,” Asian School of Journalism, Chennai, India, August 2009.
• Inaugural address, Department of English, Madras Christian College, Chennai, India, August 2009.
• Keynote lecture, “Should the World be Home? A Postcolonial Perspective?” Organization for Studies in Literature and Environment, Chennai, India, August 2009.
• "Dalit Literature and the Problem of the Aesthetic,” Loyola College, Chennai
  Loyola College, Chennai
  Loyola College is a Jesuit institution in Chennai, India. The college admits undergraduates and post-graduates and offers degrees in the liberal arts, sciences and commerce. It is an autonomous institution affiliated with the University of Madras.-History:...
  
  , India, August 2009.
• Keynote lecture, Annual World Tamil Conference, University of Toronto
  University of Toronto
  The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
  
  , Canada, May, 2009
• Keynote address, “Rethinking New-ness,” The Dutch Art Institute, Amsterdam, April, 2009.
• Plenary lecture at the Annual American Association of Commonwealth Literature, Texas, April 2009.
• Lecture and doctoral workshop on Humanism and Post-humanism, University of Trento
  University of Trento
  The University of Trento is an Italian university located in the cities of Trento and Rovereto. It has been able to achieve considerable results in didactics, research and international relations, as shown by Censis University Guide and by the Italian Ministry of...
  
  , Trento
  Trento
  Trento is an Italian city located in the Adige River valley in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. It is the capital of Trentino...
  
  , Italy, September 2008.
• Public Lecture and colloquia on Postcoloniality, Theory, and Comparative Literature, and Translation Studies, University of Hyderabad
  University of Hyderabad
  The University of Hyderabad is a post-graduate teaching and research institute in India. It was established by an act of the Parliament in 1974 as a Central University. The university also offers courses under distance learning programs...
  
  , India, Aug 08.
• Public lecture and colloquia on Globalization, the Intellectual, and the Nation State, CSTEP, Bangalore, India, August, 2008.
• Public lecture and workshops on History, Theory, and Revisionism at MS University, Baroda, India, August 2008.
• Lectures on Perception, Self reflexivity, and media studies at the Asian School of Journalism, Chennai, India, July 2008.
• Faculty panel on Interdisciplinary research, organized by graduate students, Calit 2, UC Irvine, Spring 2008.
• Public Lectures on “History, Revisionism, and the Human Subject,” Athens University, Greece, March 2008.
• “Race and Double Consciousness,” at the Annual Asian American Studies Conference, Chicago, April 2008. (Invited but could not attend)
• “Nomadology and Postcolonial Theory,” at the Annual American Comparative Literature Conference, Los Angeles, April 2008. (Invited but could not attend).
• “Heteropic Sovereignty in Ambai’s short story, A kitchen in the corner of a house,” Plenary lecture at the International conference on Contested Spaces, Goa, India, December 2007, India.
• “Edward Said’s Literary Humanism,” and workshop with English and Comparative Literature graduate students, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, September, 2007.
• “Freedom: Can it be about anything,” Cultural Studies Conference, Portland, Oregon, April 2007.
• “Grievable Life, Accountable Theory,” Department of English, SUNY-Binghamton, April 2007.
• “Between Living and Telling: Ethnicity in an Age of Transnationalism,” MLA Forum Talk, MLA Convention, Philadelphia, December 2006.
• Panelist, “Secularism and Minority Rights,” MLA Convention, Philadelphia. December, 2006
• “The Pragmatics of Reason: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore
  Rabindranath Tagore
  Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
  
  ,” Plenary lecture at the Annual Conference of Critical Theory, Udaipur, India, December 2006.
• Keynote lecture at the Annual Conference of the American Commonwealth Literature Association, “Perilous Life and Liveable Theory,” University of Santa Clara, CA, October 2006.
• Core Faculty Person, The Annual Critical Theory National Workshop, Gopalpur on the sea, Orissa
  Orissa
  Orissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...
  
  , India, July 2006.
• Public Lecture, “Theory, Contingency, and the Human Subject,” Gopalpur on the sea, Orissa, India, July 2006.
• “The Alterity Effect: Media Studies, Visuality, and the Ethics of Professionalism,” South Asian Institute of Media Journalism, Chennai
  Chennai
  Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...
  
  , India, July 2006.
• “Between Living and Telling: The Problems of Intersisciplinary Scholarship in the Humanities,” Critical Theory Institute, the Indian Institute of Science
  Indian Institute of Science
  Indian Institute of Science is a research institution of higher learning located in Bangalore, India. It was established in 1909.-History:After a chance meeting between Jamsetji N...
  
  , Bangalore
  Bangalore
  Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...
  
  , India, July 2006.
• Plenary talk on Humanism and Post-Humanism at the Annual Comparative Literature Conference, Princeton
  Princeton, New Jersey
  Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
  
  , April 2006.
• “Race and Double Consciousness,” at the Annual Asian American Studies Conference, Atlanta, March 2006.
• “History, the Human, and the World Between,” Plenary lecture at the University of Pennsylvania conference on Intellectuals and Disciplinarity, April 2005.
• “Theory as Hybridity,” at the UCLA conference on Creolized Theory, May 2006.
• “History, the Human, and the World Between,” Plenary Lecture at the Annual Critical Theory Conference, Mangalore
  Mangalore
  Mangalore is the chief port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located about west of the state capital, Bangalore. Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghat mountain ranges, and is the administrative headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in south western...
  
  , India, December 2006.
• “History, the Human, and the World Between,” Department of English and South Asian Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, November 2005.
• “Edward Said and the Politics of Humanism,” Department of English, University of Indiana, Pennsylvania, November 2005.
• Core Faculty Person at the First Summer Session of India’s School of Criticism and Theory, and taught a course, “Theory After Derrida,” the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati
  Guwahati
  Guwahati, Pragjyotishpura in ancient Assam formerly known as Gauhati is a metropolis,the largest city of Assam in India and ancient urban area in North East India, with a population of 963,429. It is also the largest metropolitan area in north-eastern India...
  
  , India, August 2005.
• Lectures on Postcoloniality, Poststructuralism, and Critical Theory, Department of English, University of Hyderabad
  University of Hyderabad
  The University of Hyderabad is a post-graduate teaching and research institute in India. It was established by an act of the Parliament in 1974 as a Central University. The university also offers courses under distance learning programs...
  
  , India, August 2005.
• “Technology, Alterity, and Simulacral Ethics,” Asian School of Journalism, Chennai, India, August 2005.
• Globalization, or the Ontology of Capital,” keynote lecture at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst conference on, Theory in an Uneven World, April 2005.
• “Theory after Derrida,” Plenary lecture at the International Critical Theory Conference, Vishakapatnam, India, December, 2004.
• Talks, seminars, and workshops at Ethiraj College, Madras Christian College
  Madras Christian College
  The Madras Christian College, commonly known as MCC, is a liberal arts and sciences college in Madras , India. Founded in 1837, MCC is one of Asia's oldest extant colleges. Currently, the college is affiliated to the University of Madras, but functions as an autonomous institution from its campus...
  
  , Vaishnav College
  Vaishnav College
  DG Vaishnav College , commonly known as DGV, is an arts, commerce and science college in Chennai, India. It is an autonomous institution affiliated with the University of Madras...
  
  , Madras Institute of Development Studies
  Madras Institute of Development Studies
  The Madras Institute of Development Studies is a research institute based in Chennai. It is a joint undertaking of the Governments of India and Tamil Nadu for conducting research on development problems in Tamil Nadu and the rest of India.-History:...
  
  , the Asia College of Journalism, Departments of Philosophy and Asia-Pacific Studies, Madras University, July–December 2003.
• Lectures on Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at the Central Institute of English as Foreign Language, Shillong
  Shillong
  -Connectivity:Although well connected by road, Shillong has no rail connection and a proper air connection. Umroi Airport exists but has only limited flights.-Roadways:Shillong is well connected by roads with all major north eastern states...
  
  , Meghalaya
  Meghalaya
  Meghalaya is a state in north-eastern India. The word "Meghalaya" literally means the Abode of Clouds in Sanskrit and other Indic languages. Meghalaya is a hilly strip in the eastern part of the country about 300 km long and 100 km wide, with a total area of about 8,700 sq mi . The...
  
  , India, 2004.
• Series of lectures on Poststructuralism and Postcoloniality at the Forum for Contemporary Critical Theory, M.S. University, Baroda, India, 2004.
• Keynote lecture, “Translation: or to be in love with two languages,” The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, 2004.
• Keynote lecture, “Olympics in an Uneven World,” at the Fulbright Conference in Athens, Greece, 2004.
• “Globalization, or the Ontology of Capital,” University of Cyprus
  University of Cyprus
  The University of Cyprus is a public coeducational university established by the Republic of Cyprus in 1989. It admitted its first students in 1992 and has currently approximately 6000 students .-History:...
  
  , 2004.
• “Why History, Why Now?” Keynote lecture at the Conference on History and Theory, University of Ankara, Turkey, 2004. at Conferences in Chennai
  Chennai
  Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...
  
   (India), Ankara
  Ankara
  Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
  
   and Istanbul
  Istanbul
  Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
  
   (Turkey), and Athens
  Athens
  Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
  
   (Greece), 2003–04.
• Keynote lecture, “Why History, Why Now?” at the International Conference on Re-thinking Modernity, Jaipur
  Jaipur
  Jaipur , also popularly known as the Pink City, is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. Founded on 18 November 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amber, the city today has a population of more than 3.1 million....
  
  , India, Dec 15-17.
• Talks and workshops at a number of Centers and Universities in India (Bangalore
  Bangalore
  Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...
  
  , Chennai
  Chennai
  Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...
  
  , New Delhi
  New Delhi
  New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
  
  , Jodhpur
  Jodhpur
  Jodhpur , is the second largest city in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is located west from the state capital, Jaipur and from the city of Ajmer. It was formerly the seat of a princely state of the same name, the capital of the kingdom known as Marwar...
  
  , and Jaipur
  Jaipur
  Jaipur , also popularly known as the Pink City, is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. Founded on 18 November 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amber, the city today has a population of more than 3.1 million....
  
  ) July-Dec 03.
• “Revisionism and the Object of History,” at the TRAUMA AND HISTORY conference, University of Washington, Seattle, June 3.
• “Theory in an Uneven World,” and “Pedagogies of Immanence,” English Department, and the Rockefeller Center, 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...
  
  , May 3.
• “Teaching the Diaspora,” Conference on the South Asian Diaspora, UCLA, May ’03.
• Lecture, “Pedagogies of the Diaspora,” English Department, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, April ‘03
• Keynote speaker at the Annual Graduate Student Conference on Literature and Literary Theory, University of Toronto
  University of Toronto
  The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
  
  , Canada, April 2003.
• “Theory in an Uneven World,” English Department, Florida State University, Tallahassee, April ’03.
• Lecture, “The Ethical Dilemma of the Postcolonial Intellectual,” SUNY-Fredonia, Spring 2003.
• “Ethics, Double-consciousness, and the Post-Colonial Intellectual,” Humanities Institute, 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...
  
  , March 3.
• “American Citizenship after 9/11,” Public lecture, University of Trent, Italy, March 3.
• “Theory as Ethical Dilemma,” International Institute, University of Wisconsin, Madison, March ’03.
• Graduate Workshop on Post-nationalism and Postcoloniality, English Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison, March ’03.
• Poetry readings (my recent Tamil poems), Departments of South Asian Studies, UCLA and the University of Madison, Wisconsin, Spring ’03.
• Classroom workshop on Postcoloniality and Post-nationalism, University of Trent, Italy, March 03.
• Lecture, “Diaspora, Hybridity, and Pedagogy,” Department of English and the Center for Latino and Latin-American Studies, 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...
  
  , December 2002.
• "Theory in an Uneven World," and “The Use and Abuse of Multiculturalism” The Society for the Humanities Public Lecture, and Seminar, Cornell University
  Cornell University
  Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
  
  , October 2002.
• Lecture, "Theory in an Uneven World," Department of English, University of Southern California
  University of Southern California
  The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
  
  , October 2002.
• Lecture, “Theory in an Uneven World,” Department of English, Queen’s College, Ontario, Canada, Fall 2002
• Lecture, "The Return of Ontology after 9/11," Dartmouth College boundary 2 conference, November, 2002.
• Lecture, “Theory in an Uneven World,” Department of English, Columbia University
  Columbia University
  Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
  
  , November 2002.
• "Diaspora, Pedagogy, Hybridity," plenary lecture at the Conference on Anglophone Literatures: Centers and Peripheries, Saarbrücken
  Saarbrücken
  Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....
  
  , Germany, August 2002.
• Lecture on “The Diaspora,” The Humanities Institute, Cornell University, Spring 2002
• Lecture on “Multiculturalism and the Aesthetics of Hybridity, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
  Stanford University
  The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
  
  , Spring 2002.
• Lecture, Department of Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University
  Carnegie Mellon University
  Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
  
  , Spring 2002.
• Lecture, "The Use and Abuse of Multiculturalism," Departments of English and South Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
  University of California, Berkeley
  The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
  
  , April 2002.
• Plenary Lecture, "Translations between and within Worlds," University of Hawaii
  University of Hawaii
  The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
  
  , East-West Center, April 2002.
• Forum on Feminist Studies and Pedagogy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, December 2001.
• Dialogue on Cultural Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, November 2001.
• Meeting of the Editorial Board of boundary 2, and the Conference on Ralph Ellison. University of Pittsburgh
  University of Pittsburgh
  The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
  
  , PA, November 2001.
• “The Use and Abuse of Multiculturalism,” Department of Cultural Studies, Macquarie University
  Macquarie University
  Macquarie University is an Australian public teaching and research university located in Sydney, with its main campus situated in Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of Sydney...
  
  , Sydney, Australia, July 2001.
• “Postcoloniality and Double Consciousness," Triennial Conference on Commonwealth Literature, Canberra
  Canberra
  Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
  
  , Australia, July 2001.
• “Globality, Desire and the Politics of Representation,” Institute for Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne
  Melbourne
  Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
  
  , Australia, July 2001.
• “We are the World, but Who are we, and How do we Know?” Department of English, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, July 2001.
• “South-Asian Youth Culture and Academic Politics”, Brown University
  Brown University
  Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
  
  , May 2001.
• “Defining Multiculturalism in the Academy”, School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, May 2001.
• “When is the Political?” Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
  University of California, Santa Cruz
  The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
  
  , April 2001.
• “The Use and Abuse of Multiculturalism,” Keynote lecture at the Borderlands Conference, Department of Communication Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, March 2001.
• “Revisiting Intentionality in the Age of Mediatized Production,” Lecture at the Institute for Journalism and Media Studies, Chennai, India, January 2001.
• “Deconstruction and Post-structuralism,” Lecture at Stella Maris College
  Stella Maris College
  Stella Maris College may also refer to:* Stella Maris College in Sydney, Australia* Stella Maris College in Chennai, India* Stella Maris College in Hyogo, Japan* Stella Maris College , Malta...
  
  , Chennai, India January 2001.
• “Culture, Globality and Media Studies”, Keynote Lecture at Chennai University, English Department, Madras January 2001.
• “History of Contemporary Critical Theory,” Department of English, Madras Christian College, Chennai, India, January 2001.
• “Hybridity and Representation,” English Department Colloquium, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, December 2000.
• “Modernity between Worlds,” New Modernisms Seminar, University of Pennsylvania, October 2000.
• “Adjudicating Hybridity, Coordinating Betweenness,” Rethinking Marxism International conference, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, September 2000, and the Department of English, University of Pittsburgh, October 2000.

• “Intellectuality and Academic Activism,” Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers, Phillips Academy
  Phillips Academy
  Phillips Academy is a selective, co-educational independent boarding high school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12, along with a post-graduate year...
  
  , Massachusetts, July 2000.
• “Globality, Desire and the Politics of Representation” Plenary Lecture at the Summer Symposium on Globality, University of Oregon, Eugene, June 2000.
• “We are the World: Limits of Globality,” Rethinking Marxism International conference, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, September 2000, and the Department of English, Northwestern University, May 2000.
• “Subaltern Representation and Poststructuralist Theory,” UCLA, March 1999.
• Panelist on Postcolonial theory, MLA, San Francisco, December 1998.
• “Mapping Asian-American Cultural Topographies,” University of California, Irvine, November 1998.
• “Theorizing Diaspora, Adjudicating Hybridity,” Colloquium, Department of English, U of Florida, Gainesville, March 1998.
• “Theorizing Diaspora, Adjudicating Hybridity,” Public Lecture, U of Wisconsin, Madison, March 1998.
• “Literature and Critical Theory,” Meenakshi College for Women, Madras University, India, January 1998.
• “What is Postcoloniality?” Madras Christian College, Chennai, India January 1998.
• “Location, Identity and Nomadology,” New Museum of Contemporary Art
  New Museum of Contemporary Art
  The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world...
  
  , NYC, January 1998.
• “The Use and Abuse of Multiculturalism,” Colloquium, Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, Harvard University
  Harvard University
  Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
  
  , November 1997.

“Nationalism and After,” Colloquium, Department of English, George Mason University

George Mason University

George Mason University is a public university based in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, south of and adjacent to the city of Fairfax. Additional campuses are located nearby in Arlington County, Prince William County, and Loudoun County...

, VA, November 1997.

“Conjunctural Identities, Academic Adjacencies,” Colloquium, The International Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, October 1996

“Poststructuralism and Postcoloniality: A Relationship,” Dartmouth College, NH, May 1996.

“Global English,” University of Pittsburgh, May 1996.

“Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Theory,” Colloquium, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Maryland, College Park

University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...

, April 1996.

Respondent and Organizer of 3 panels (under Division 33) on “Postcoloniality and Double-Consciousness,” MLA, Chicago, December 1995.

“The Use and Abuse of Multiculturalism,” University of New Hampshire

University of New Hampshire

The University of New Hampshire is a public university in the University System of New Hampshire , United States. The main campus is in Durham, New Hampshire. An additional campus is located in Manchester. With over 15,000 students, UNH is the largest university in New Hampshire. The university is...

, Durham, November 1995.

“Theory, Identity, History,” University of Massachusetts, Amherst, November 1995.

“Human Rights, Women’s Rights: Reading between Nations,” and “Representing Multiculturalism,” Oberlin College

Oberlin College

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

, OH, October 1995.

“Subaltern Theory and the Ethics of Persuasion,” Conference on Postcoloniality and Psychoanalysis, George Washington University

George Washington University

The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...

, October 1995.

“What is a Comparison?” University of Massachusetts, Comparative Literature, Fall 1995.

“Postmodernism and Postcoloniality: A Relationship,” Xiamen University

Xiamen University

Xiamen University , colloquially known as Xia Da , located in Xiamen, Fujian province, is the first university in China founded by overseas Chinese. Before 1949, it was originally known as the University of Amoy. The school motto is "Pursue Excellence, Strive for Perfection "...

, PR of China, August 1995.

“Postcoloniality and Western Theory,” International Conference on Literary Theory, Jinan

Jinan

Jinan is the capital of Shandong province in Eastern China. The area of present-day Jinan has played an important role in the history of the region from the earliest beginnings of civilisation and has evolved into a major national administrative, economic, and transportation hub...

, PR of China, August 1995.

Interviewed by Radio Bandung on “The Meaning of Black in Minority Coalitions,” August 1995

“Multiculturalism and Minority Intellectuals,” Phillips Academy, MA, July 1995.

“Asian-American studies: A Disciplinary Critique,” University of Washington, Seattle, May 1995.

“South Asian Diaspora and the Politics of Memory,” Annual Gandhi Lecture, South Asian Studies, 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...

, Spring 1995.

“Recycling Memory in the Diaspora,” International Conference on Recycling Memory, University of Montreal, Canada, February 1995.

Respondent in a special session panel on Salman Rushdie, MLA, San Diego, December 1994.

Panelist on “Diaspora and Postcoloniality,” Asian Studies Association Conference, Boston, March 1994.

“Edward Said as Postcolonial Intellectual,” special session, MLA, Toronto, December 1993.

“Postcoloniality and the Boundaries of Identity,” Department of English, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Fall 1993.

“Postcoloniality and the Diaspora,” Humanities Center, Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

, CT., Fall 1993.

“Minority Discourses and the Question of Knowledge,” Annual Asian Arts Conference, NY City, Fall 1993.

“Identity, Authenticity, and Cultural Studies,” University of Rochester

University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...

, Department of Comparative Literature, April 1993.

Chief Speaker and workshop leader at the interdisciplinary cultural studies seminar, Department of English, University of New Hampshire, Durham, March 1993.

“Transgression and Constituency in South Asian Cultural Theory,” South Asian Studies Conference, University of California, Berkeley, February 1993.

“Postcoloniality and the Boundaries of Identity,” Center for the Humanities, Stanford University, February 1993.

Speaker, MLA panel on Teaching South-Asian Literature, December 1992.

Organizer of panel, “Understanding Human Nature: Post-Marxist Epistemologies,” International conference on 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....

, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Fall 1992.

Featured Speaker at the Symposium: Beyond Exile: Intellectuals Abroad, Center for 20th Century Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, October 1992.

“The Rhetoric of Authenticity in Emergent Literatures,” University of Minnesota, May 1992.

“Cultural Politics and Hybridity,” International Association of Philosophy and Literature Conference, University of California, Berkeley, May 1992.

“The Postcolonial Body,” at the Conference on Margins and Modernity, Department of Communication Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Spring 1992.

Chair, panel on “Narrative Authorities and the Politics of Location,” at the International Conference on Narrative, Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...

, April 1992. Also presented a paper, “Diaspora, Displacement, and questions of Representation.”

“Postcoloniality as Constituency,” Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, November 1991.

Speaker at the Wesleyan Research Workshop on Cultural Studies and Pedagogy, November 1991.

“Coalitions in an Academic Context,” Phillips Academy, MA, July 1991.

“Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity,” English Department, Dartmouth College, Spring 1991.

“Third World Feminisms: India,” Smith College

Smith College

Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...

, MA, Spring 1991.

“Postcoloniality and the Internationalization of Cultural Studies,” featured talk at the Wesleyan Conference on Postcolonial Cultural Studies, Spring 1991.

“Subaltern Authority and Poststructuralist Epistemology,” English Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Spring 1991.

“Representing the Political,” and “Pedagogy as Practice,” MLA Chicago, December 1990.

“Reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines,” Department of South Asian Studies, University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, Fall 1990.

Invited Guest Speaker at the Montclair State College Workshop on Literary Theory, New Jersey, May 1990.

“Signifying Difference: Theory and Cultural Studies,” English and Women’s Studies, Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

, Newark, NJ, Spring 1990.

Featured Speaker at the Rutgers-Princeton Conference on Deconstruction and History: “The Subaltern Difference: Postcoloniality and History.” Spring 1990.

“Postmodernism and Postcoloniality,” University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

 Humanities Center, March 1990.

“Work in Progress,” at the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, Rutgers University, February 1990.

“Semanticizing the Post-: The Nature of the Future after Marxism,” International Marxist Conference, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, December 1989.

“The postcolonial intellectual,” Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...

, December 1989.

“Literary Theory, Cultural Studies, and the Humanities,” University of New Hampshire, Durham, December 1989.

“Subalternity as Methodology,” Center for European Studies, Harvard University, December 1989.

“Literary Theory and the Left,” University of Massachusetts, Amherst, October 1989.

Chaired a panel on India and Ireland, Conference on Nationalisms and Sexualities, Harvard University, June 1989.

Panelist on the Social Production of Knowledge, University of Minnesota, April 1989.

“The Politics of Subject-Positions: Are We all living in the same World?” International Conference on Language and Literature, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, May 1988.

“Rushdie and the cultural politics of liminality,” International Research Conference on Cultural Hermeneutics: East and West, Center for 20th Century Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, December 1987.

“Towards an effective intellectual: Foucault or Gramsci?” SUNY-Binghamton, November 1987.

“The Epistemics of the Future in the Age of the Post-“International Association of Philosophy and Literature Conference, University of Warwick

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

, England, July 1987.

“Coalitional Theory,” Internationalist Socialist Scholars Conference, New York, NY, May 1987.

Featured talk at the International Gramsci Conference, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, April 1987.

“Feminist Historiography and Poststructuralist Theory: Intersections and Departures,” Annual Symposium of English and American Literature, University of Alabama

University of Alabama

The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

, October 86, and at the Popular Culture Conference, Atlanta, April 1986.

“Ethnic Identity and Poststructuralist Difference,” Conference on Minority Discourse, University of California, Berkeley, May 1985, and at the MLA Convention, December 1985.

“Theory and Metaphor,” University Lecture, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Guest Lecture on Foucault and Critical Theory, 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,...

, Poughkeepsie, Spring 1983.

“The Postmodern Event and the End of Logocentrism,” Dartmouth College, Fall 1982.

Other Papers and Talks Presented

“Nationalism and the Narrative of Identity,” MLA, Washington DC. December 1989.

“Narrative and the Search for the Real,” Conference on Narrative Theory, University of Wisconsin, Madison, April 1989.

“Changing the Subject,” English Department Colloquium, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, April 1989.

“Liminal Narratives,” International Association of Philosophy and Literature Conference, Emory University

Emory University

Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...

, Georgia, April 1989.

“Professing Literary Criticism,” and “Theorizing Cultural Studies,” MLA, New Orleans, December 1988

“Culture as Common Ground: Is Race still an Obstacle?” American Studies Association Convention, Miami, November 1988.

“Aesthetic Truth: Production or ‘Letting be’” International Association of Philosophy and Literature Conference, NotreDame University, Indiana, April 1988.

“Professionalism and the Politics of Subject Positions,” and “Opposition and Disciplinarity,” MLA, San Francisco, December 1987.

“Ideology Critique: Jameson and Poststructuralism,” International Association of Philosophy and Literature conference, University of Kansas

University of Kansas

The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...

, April 1987.

“Professionalism,” English Department Colloquium, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, March 1987.

“Canonicity and Poststructuralist Pedagogy,” MLA, Chicago, December 1986.

“Ideology versus ‘Ideology’: Towards a Poststructuralist Ethic,” Northeastern University, March 1986.

“Canon versus ‘Canon’: Towards a Poststructuralist Pedagogy,” American Comparative Literature Triennial, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at the English Department Colloquium, University of Massachusetts, Amherst March 1986.

“Ethnic Identity and Poststructuralist Difference,” MLA

Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...

, December 1985.

“The Axiology of Literature and the Value of Identity,” Annual Meeting of GRIP (Group for Research on the Institutionalization of the Profession), Miami University

Miami University

Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...

, Oxford, OH, and the English Department Colloquium, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1985.

“Utopian Textuality and the Unreal City,” International Association of Philosophy and Literature Annual Conference, CUNY, May 1985.

“The Politics of Deconstruction,” Conference on the Politics of Literary Adulation, Westchester University, PA, February 1985.

External links

• R. Radhakrishnan page at UC Irvine site