I teach and study modern literature, with interests in South Asia, modernism, the global Cold War, and postcolonial studies. 

My academic writing has appeared in South Asia, the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and Safundi. I have also contributed chapters to an edited volume on the cultural Cold War and the Global South, and to forthcoming volumes on Indian New Wave cinema and the Indian Emergency of 1975-77. You can read more about my scholarship here

I also write occasional essays on literature and history for The Point. You can read my public-facing writing here. 

Most of my research, so far, has focused on the turn towards melancholia and disillusionment in Indian literature and cinema, prompted by the years of crisis that followed the death of the country's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1964. My new project turns to the global South Asian diaspora. Tracing an alternative history of modernism through the journeys of itinerant coolies, soldiers, and traders, I argue that it is religion -- and not race -- that holds the key to understanding literature's struggle against the quintessential modern condition of uprootedness. 

Prior to coming to York, I was a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University, where I received the Alan Heimert Teaching Prize in 2023. I completed my PhD in English at the University of Pennsylvania, where my work was supported by a teaching fellowship from the Center for Communication within the Curriculum. In what feels like another life, I've also been a journalist and social worker in India.