I am a scholar of contemporary Asian American, South Asian Anglophone, and global literatures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My research pursues questions about the relationship between ethnic particularity, postcolonial histories and futures, and the aspirations of universality and worldliness. Much of my work is metacritical; it explores the style and craft of humanities writing, the politics of address, and genres of scholarly criticism.
My first monograph Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone will be published by Columbia UP in June 2025. A pandemic memoir, The End Doesn't Happen All at Once, co-written with Chi Rainer Bornfree, was published by Aleph Book Company in February 2025. A book of essays, What is We?, will be published in "The New Basics" series from Agenda Publishing in November 2025. I am also a co-editor, with Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, and Pavitra Sundar, of a field-announcing volume in interdisciplinary accent studies, called Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023; winner of the ACLA's René Wellek Prize for Best Edited Volume).
I have edited multiple special issues and contributed to a number of academic books and journals across fields, including Comparative Literature, MLQ, ARIEL, Post45, Interventions, GLQ, South Asian Review, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Studies in South Asian Film & Media, Feminist Formations, Women & Performance, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, The Critic as Amateur (Bloomsbury), and Teaching Anglophone South Asian Women Writers (MLA Teaching Options). My essays have appeared online at The New Yorker, Public Books, L.A. Review of Books, and Guernica, and in print at The Caravan, The Philosopher, and Himal Southasian, among other outlets.
From 2007-2009, I was the Editor of India Currents magazine, for which I wrote a regular column from 2001-2016. My editorial tenure at India Currents earned an Ideas Festival scholarship from the Aspen Institute, and my column was syndicated by NAM, SJBeez, Khabar, and The Aerogram. I am a recipient of the California Journalism Award, two Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards, and five New America Media awards. I have been a longtime contributor to the South Asian American Digital Archive, including as Co-Chair of SAADA's Academic Council and Affiliated Scholars.
I did my undergraduate work as an Angier B. Duke Scholar at Duke University, graduating summa cum laude with a BA in Literature. I received my PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. From 2016-2017, I was an assistant professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. From 2017-2022, I was an assistant professor of English and Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory at the University of Arizona.
I am currently an assistant professor of English and affiliate faculty in Transnational Asian Studies and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University. I am also a member of the Editorial Collective of MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, an incoming Editorial Board member of Narrative, and the former Chair of the Executive Committee of the MLA's Global Anglophone Forum. At Rice, I serve on the Governing Council of the Chao Center for Asian Studies, the Faculty Council of the Humanities Research Center, and the University Committee on Examinations and Standing.
