Education
Ph.D. University of Chicago, South Asian Languages and Civilizations. 2006
M.A. University of Chicago, South Asian Languages and Civilizations. 2000.
B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, History (Highest Honors), Minor in Literature 1997
Publications
Books
Late Colonial Sublime: Neo-Epics and the End of Romanticism (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018); recipient of the Mellon Foundation Modern Language Initiative First Book Prize.
Transposed Minds: Indo-German Cultural Exchange and a Critique of Identity (in progress)
Articles, Chapters, Interviews, Reviews, and Translation
“Displaced Peripheries/Geopolitical Allegories: Roberto Schwarz, Rajinder Singh Bedi, and Colonial Legacies in India” in Thomas Waller (ed.), Roberto Schwarz and World Literature (London: Palgrave, forthcoming in 2024).
“Minor Philology: Aphorisms”, Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 20:1-2, 84-88 (also online).
“Some Soprano Lessons: On Approaching Diasporic Marginality, Absence, and Television” in Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory (online publication, February 2023, forthcoming in print in 2025).
“Cosmopolitanism, Millenarianism, and Sikhism in a Persianate India: Some Motifs in Recent Historiography”, Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 19:1, 13-27 (also online).
“Late Colonial Sublime” (Interviewed by Saronik Basu), South Asian Studies, Critical Theory, Literary Studies, British Studies, New Books Network, April 12, 2022, https://newbooksnetwork.com/late-colonial-sublime.
“Identifying Khizr: On the Paths of Goethe and Iqbal”, boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, 49:3 (2022).
“Reading with the Runaways, or Namesakes in Diaspora: On Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways”, Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory, 16:4 (2020).
“Modernity” (Sikhism section) Encyclopedia of Indian Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Verlag, 2013).
“Uncanny Affinities: A Translation of Iqbal’s Preface to Payam-e Mashriq”, Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 15:3 (2013).
“Apocalyptic Praxes / Paradoxes of Progress”, lanaturnerjournal.com. Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion, Aug. 2012.
“The Dialectic of Postmodernism” (Review of Fredric Jameson’s Valences of the Dialectic), Lana Turner: Journal of Poetry and Opinion, 4: 1 (2011).
“Guru Nanak and Rational Civil Theology”, Sikh Formations, 7:2, 131-143 (2011).
“Zero Figurality, or Imperialism and Form” (A Critique of Fredric Jameson’s The Modernist Papers), The Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature, vol. 8, no. 1 2010.
“The Persistence of Identity”, The Annual of Urdu Studies, vol. 24, 2009.
“The Paradoxes of Dalit Cultural Politics” in Anne Feldhaus and Manu Bhagavan (eds.), Claiming Power from Below: Dalits and the Subaltern Question (A Festshrift in Honor of Eleanor Zelliot), Oxford University Press, 2008.
“Patterns in the World of Literature” (A Review of Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters), Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature, 6.2 (Fall 2007).
Translations from the Urdu of respective works by Balvant Singh, Pitras Bukhari, and Nida Fazli in Mehr Farooqi (ed.), Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature, Oxford University Press, 2007.
Review of Gandhi in His Times and Ours by David Hardiman, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 26.2 (2006): 333-337.
“Deciphering the Promise of Tradition” (A Review of Zamiruddin Ahmad’s The East Wind and Other Short Stories), The Annual of Urdu Studies, vol. 20, 2005.
Public Presentations and Activities
“Heavy Mistranslation: German Orientalism and Sikh Scripture” in the Department of Religious Studies, Macalester College, October 30, 2024.
“Semiotics of Translational Flow: Goethe and Iqbal on the Nature Image of Islam” on the panel “Asian Comparative Literature and Film (Session 5): Asian-German Textual Transnationality” at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 10, 2024.
Chair and Discussant, “Asian Comparative Literature and Film (Session 1): Thinking Ecology through Human and Nonhuman Relationships” at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 10, 2024.
“Critical Demands of the Non-Normative: Roberto Schwarz and Southern Dialectics” at the “Roberto Schwarz: Beyond Borders” Conference, University of Cologne, June 7, 2024.
Discussion of “Guru Nanak and Rational Civil Theology” (with Anne Murphy), “Foundations of Sikhism” in the Department of History, University of British Columbia, May 23, 2024
Organizer and Discussant of Aurora Series Winter 2024 Event, James Laine, “Early Modern Cosmopolitanism: Steps on the Road to an Idea of Religious Tolerance” (with Anna Bigelow); and “James Laine on Meta-Religion: Religion and Power in World History” (Conversation with Professor James Laine), UC Santa Cruz (hybrid event), March 11-12, 2024.
“Displaced Peripheries/Geopolitical Allegories: Roberto Schwarz, Rajinder Singh Bedi, and Colonial Legacies in India”, Centre for Diaspora Studies, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab, December 11, 2023.
“Amphibian Zones and Planetary Justice: Inter-Areal Studies as Dialectic of Land and Sea” at the “Mediterranean Studies, Present and Future: The ‘California School’ Twenty Years On”, UC Santa Cruz, November 4, 2023.
“Identifications in the Negative: Kafka, Masud, and Fascism” in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature Lecture Series, University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), October 20, 2023.
Discussant for the Panel Stream “Imagining the City: Literary and Religious Practices of Urbanity in Early Modern and Modern South Asia” at the European Conference on South Asian Studies, Turin, Italy, July 26-27, 2023.
Discussion of “Guru Nanak and Rational Civil Theology” (with Anne Murphy), “Foundations of Sikhism” in the Department of History, University of British Columbia, June 6, 2023.
Presenter on “American Fascism and Sikh Precarity Roundtable” at the Eighth Dr. Jasbir Singh Saini Chair in Sikh Studies Conference “Sikhs in North America: Remembering Key Historical Events, Challenges, and Responses”, UC Riverside, May 5, 2023.
Organizer, Discussant, and Presenter of Aurora Workshop Spring 2023 “Caste, Class, and Race: Inter-Areal Studies of Socio-Cultural Contradiction” with Presentation on “Caste and Mobility in the Belle Époque: Proustian Impressions”, UC Santa Cruz (hybrid event), April 28, 2023.
Organizer, Discussant, and Presenter of Aurora Workshop Winter 2023 “Gramsci: Southern Questions” with Presentation on “The Birth of Fascism Among the Monkey People”, UC Santa Cruz (hybrid event), February 18, 2023.
“Caste and Mobility in the Belle Époque: Proustian Impressions” on the “Race, Caste, and Colorism” Seminar at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL, April 10, 2023.
Organizer and Discussant of Aurora Series Fall 2022 Event “Clio in India: Approaches to South Asian Pasts” (Conversation with Professor Richard Eaton), UC Santa Cruz (hybrid event), October 7, 2022.
Panel Moderator, Socialist World Cultures Conference, UC Santa Cruz (UCHRI and UCSC Humanities Institute), May 27, 2022.
Organizer and Discussant of Aurora Series Spring 2022 Events: Arvind-pal S. Mandair, “Epistemic Empowerment: Sikh Philosophy and Cognitive Decolonization”, UC Santa Cruz (hybrid event), April 14, 2022; and Harjeet Grewal, “Janamsakhis and Sikh Epistemology”, UC Santa Cruz (hybrid event), May 5, 2022.
Discussion of Work (with Anne Murphy), “Foundations of Sikhism” in the Department of History, University of British Columbia, February 3, 2022.
“Philology of Another Future: Revisiting Ernst Trumpp and German Orientalism” at the Global South Colloquium: Punjab in the World: History, Politics, and Migration, University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada), January 27, 2022.
Co-Curator and Exhibit Organizer, Sikh Art in America: The Kapany Collection, Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery at UC Santa Cruz (Cowell College), Winter Quarter 2022.
Presenter on the “Future of Sikh Studies Roundtable” at the Seventh Dr. Jasbir Singh Saini Chair in Sikh Studies Conference on “Sikh Studies in the Western Academy: Prospects and Challenges”, UC Riverside, May 7, 2021.
“Identity and Negativity: Adorno Today” on the “Dreaming Within/Beyond the Crisis of the Present” Seminar at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting (Zoom Meeting), April 10, 2021.
“The Little Clay Cart on the Way to Epic Theater” at the Center for South Asia, Stanford University, February 6, 2020.
Discussant and Chair for the panel “Jahaan tedi yeh nazar hai! Theories of the Gaze Beyond Darshan” 48th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, October 18, 2019.
“Thomas Mann, Heinrich Zimmer, and the Locus of India in the Geo-Imaginary of Romanticism” in the Provincializing Romanticism Lecture Series, Northwestern University Department of Comparative Literature, October 17, 2019.
“Reading with the Runaways, or Namesakes in Diaspora: On Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways: A Novel” in the ELH Speaker Series at Johns Hopkins University English Department, September 12, 2019.
G.S. Sahota, “Identifying Khizr: On the Paths of Goethe and Iqbal” at the Norman O. Brown: Into the Future Conference, University of California, Santa Cruz, May 18, 2019.
“Gestus Contra Fascism: A Roundtable on Brecht and Politics” (co-organizer and presenter) at the Department of Theater Arts, University of California, Santa Cruz, November 1, 2017.
“The Massive Flow: Brecht and the Fashioning of Post-Colonial Identity in India” at “Literature and Politics: The Princeton Hindi-Urdu Conference 2016,” Princeton University, November 12, 2016.
“Recycling the Folk and Refashioning the Public: Brechtian Epic Theatre in Post- Independence India” on the “Brecht in India” panel at the 15th Symposium of the International Brecht Society (“Recycling Brecht”), Oxford University, June 28, 2016.
“Utility and Culture in British India” at South Asia Symposium, University of California, Santa Cruz, May 19, 2016.
“Francis Bacon in Benares: Competing Teleologies of Utility in British India” on the “Intellectual Labor and the Crisis of Value within the Humanities” Seminar at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting at Harvard University, March 18, 2016.
“Melancholic Ornament: TV Ramayana, Nostalgia, and Kitsch as Counter-Enlightenment” at the Institute for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, November 2, 2015.
“The Names of Reason: Translation and Historical Time” on Panel 309 “Premodernity and the Problem of the Remnant: Perspectives from South and East Asia” at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Meeting in Chicago, March 29, 2015.
Faculty Discussant for Panel II at “Polyvocal Hindustan: Literatures, Languages, and Publics” Conference at the Center for South Asia at Stanford University, March 6-7, 2015.
“Veils of the Absolute Subject: Benjamin’s Sublime”, Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, October 15, 2014.
Faculty Discussant for Panel VII (Narrative[s]), Feminist Interventions: On Gender and South Asia, South Asia by the Bay Graduate Conference 2014 at UC Santa Cruz, May 2, 2014.
“Passive Revolution in Modern India” on the “Race, Nation, Capital” panel, Crisis in the Cultures of Capitalism Conference, UC Santa Cruz, April 19, 2014.
“Allegorico-Historical Tangent on Conrad’s Lord Jim” at the Dehli University (Main Campus), Department of English, April 7, 2014.
“The Absolute in Benjamin: Language, Name, Translation” at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), Philosophy Colloquium, March 26, 2014.
“Penumbra and Possibility in Chayavad, or Aesthetics of the Semi-Colonial” in “Peripheries and Possibilities: Comparative Perspectives on the Cultural Logics of (Post-) Colonialism in South Asia” Seminar at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting at New York University, March 21, 2014.
Seminar Leader for “Peripheries and Possibilities: Comparative Perspectives on the Cultural Logics of (Post-) Colonialism in South Asia” at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting at New York University, March 20-23, 2014.
Academic Honors, Awards and Fellowships
- Faculty Fellow, EVC Fellows Academy, UC Santa Cruz, Fall 2022
- Faculty Fellow, Institute for Humanities Research, UC Santa Cruz, 2013-2014
- Fellowship (Europe in the Middle East/Middle East in Europe), Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2010-2011)
- Institute for Advanced Study Research Collaborative Award, University of
Minnesota (2010, declined) - Single-Semester Sabbatical, University of Minnesota (2009)
- McKnight Summer Research Fellowship, University of Minnesota (2007)
- Doolittle-Harrison Fellowship, University of Chicago (2006)
- Norman Wait Harris Award of the Center for International Studies, University of
Chicago (2004) - Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship (2004)
- Committee on Southern Asian Studies Dissertation Research Grant (2003)
- American Institute of Indian Studies Language Study Fellowship (2001)
- Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Language Fellowship (2000)
- University of Chicago Century Fellowship (1998)
- UCSC Chancellor’s Award for B.A. Essay on Indian Nationalism (1997)
- Phi Beta Kappa (1997)