I am a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut. My dissertation “Textual Pleasures: Amusement and Affect in Post/colonial India (1850-1950)” focuses on a long-standing investment of popular literature: amusement, or a cluster of emotionally uplifting and/or pleasurable experiences including but not limited to those which evoke bursts of laughter or exclamations of wonder. I work with several late nineteenth and twentieth century genres of amusement popular in the Indian subcontinent and in Britain such as satiric commentaries on society and politics, science articles for amateurs, short pieces on travel and adventure, children’s literature, and cheap “lowlife” chapbooks and advertisements all characteristically suited to the wide public outreach made possible by print culture and trace the confluence of preexisting aesthetic theories and practices of amusement indigenous to and popular in South Asia, alongside a more recent, generative and discursive tradition borne of the colonial encounter with Britain. 

Having once remarked to a friend that the best way to kill a joke is to analyze it, I see the irony in that I would find interest in humor studies and spend my years dissecting amusement. But far from exhausting my sources of pleasure, my research opened me up to allied fields of interests such as popular culture, and visual arts and illustrations. Apart from Anglophone global Victorian and 20th century literature, I am invested in theories of Affect and emphasize the importance of reading texts through emotions. My work also involves translation of Indian literature to decenter and “undiscipline” 19th century literature in the academia.

My work has been published in South Asian Review, Literature/Film Quarterly, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, and elsewhere. I am currently a Draper Dissertation Fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. A certificate course in Translation Studies, a few benign fellowships from the UCONN. Graduate school, and the Walter L. Arnstein prize from the Midwest Victorian Studies Association have contributed variously to direct and consolidate my interests and fund my research. 

I am also deeply invested in public-faced Humanities. I create original content and co-host the YouTube channel @theantilibrarypodcast which discusses topics on Literature, Art, History, Critical Theory, and Philosophy through reels, longform videos, and academic interviews aiming to broaden the reach and relevance of the Humanities in the lives of people within and beyond the academia.