Mukti Lakhi Mangharam
Mukti Lakhi Mangharam
Department of English,
Rutgers New Brunswick, NJ, USA 08901
Tel: (412) 551-7257 | Email: | Web:
Office: Murray Hall 051
ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE
Assistant ProfessorAugust 2011 – present
Rutgers New Brunswick, Department of English
EDUCATION
Ph.D. English Language and Literature. August 2011Cornell University. Ithaca, NY
M.Phil. Criticism and Culture, English.May 2006.
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
B.A. English and History, First Class Honors,
University of York, York, UK.May 2005.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
My current research focuses on indigenous discourses of human rights and modernity in South African and South Asian Literatures. I investigate pre-colonial and colonial ideas of rationality, individual freedom and democracy that arose relatively independently from European versions of these concepts, paying close attention to the literary forms through which they are expressed. In doing so, I suggest ways of recuperating a critical humanism for the work of Postcolonial scholars.
The fields I work in include Postcolonial Literature, the literatures of South Africa and South Asia, and Feminism and Gender Studies.
PUBLICATIONS (JOURNALS)
- Mukti Lakhi Mangharam, “Ubuntu Sports Inc: The Commodification of Culture in South African and American Sports,” Safundi, Issue 12.1, January 2011.
- Mukti Lakhi Mangharam, “Radical Religious Poetry in Colonial Orissa,” Economic and Political Weekly, VOL 46 No. 18 April 30 – May 04, 2011.
- Mukti Lakhi Mangharam, “Sexing, Feministing and Queering the ‘Ramayana,’” Diacritics, Forthcoming.
- Mukti Lakhi Mangharam, “The Turn to Human Rights in Postcolonial Studies, An Essay Review.” Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Forthcoming.
- Mukti Lakhi, “An Alternative Feminist Modernity: Fantastic Utopia and the Quest for Home in Sultana’s Dream” Postgraduate English, (September 2006) No. 14.
SELECTED CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS
“Affective Agencies: A New Direction for Feminist Conceptions of Individual Freedom?” Wisconsin Madison Feminist Pre-Conference, October 2010
“South African Indigenous Modernities,” Harvard University, American Comparative Literature Association, Cambridge, MA, April 2009
“Multiple Ideological Transactions Across Borders: Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Saguna,” Oxford University, Postcolonial Victorians?, Oxford, UK, June 2006
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Course Instructor, Global Women’s Writing (1 section)
351:366 Literatures of Migration, Immigration, and DiasporaFall 2011
Rutgers New Brunswick
Fully constructed a writing intensive upper level undergraduate seminar.
Instruction in writing in the humanities using formal, theoretical, and historical approaches to fiction and film.
This seminar examines a corpus of literature written by diasporic women from Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent to understand the multiple ways in which they negotiate the gender norms of their society. We will also engage with diverse articulations of sexuality and desire as they interact with race, class and culture and consider the relationship of these texts to the English canon. Texts range from Dominican writer Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea to Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, as well as critical essays from transnational/postcolonial feminist theory.
Course Instructor, Other Shakespeares ( 1 section) Fall 2011
350:426 Shakespeare Seminar
Rutgers New Brunswick
Fully constructed a writing intensive upper level seminar.
Instruction in writing in the humanities using formal, theoretical, and historical approaches to fiction and film.
This seminar examines modern-day adaptations of Shakespearean texts in conjunction with their Shakespearean counterparts. We will draw on a wide variety of both filmic and literary texts from across the world. Texts will range from South Asian filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool to Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and Caribbean poet-playwright Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest.
Course Instructor, Global Romance (2 sections, enrollment 17 each.) Fall 2010 – Spring 2011
Cornell University
Upper level, writing intensive seminar for seniors in the English major. Included critical theory as well as fiction and film (David Hwang’s M. Butterfly, Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadowlines, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night among others) on how discourses of romantic love construct and disrupt colonial, national, gendered and racial identities.
Course Instructor, Gender Across Cultures in Fiction and Film Fall 2008 – Spring 2009
Cornell University
Fully constructed and taught writing intensive first-year seminar predominantly for non-majors.
Introduction to writing in the humanities using formal, theoretical, and historical approaches to fiction and film. “Cross Cultural Constructions of Gender” explored how sexual and gender identities become normalized in cultural and historical moments as varied as 20th century Europe, colonial India and Morocco, reading texts such as Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Rabindranath Tagore’s Home and the World, and Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass.
Course Instructor, Encountering the ‘Other’ Fall 2007-Spring 2008
Cornell University
Fully constructed and taught writing intensive first-year seminar predominantly for nonmajors.
Introduction to writing in the humanities using formal, theoretical, and historical approaches to fiction and film. “Encountering the Other,” investigated literary constructions of racial and gendered others alongside non-Western literary responses to these colonial constructions; we read Othello with Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and Jane Eyre with Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, among other texts.
RESEARCH AWARDS and HONORS
- Sage Fellowship, Cornell Univ. 2006-07.
- Sage Fellowship, Cornell Univ. 2009-2010
- Cornell Society for the Humanities ‘Humanities Dissertation Writing Group’ grant. 2009- 2010. This was a $1000 grant that enabled meetings to discuss dissertation chapters.
- Cornell Society for the Humanities Travel Grant, 2010. A $1000 grant enabling research related travel to Johannesburg, South Africa.
- Cornell Peace Studies Travel Grant, 2010. A $1900 grant enabling research related travel to Johannesburg, South Africa.
LANGUAGES
Fluent in English, Dutch, and Hindi. Conversant in Afrikaans, Bengali and Sindhi. Working knowledge of French and Urdu. Currently learning Zulu.
SERVICE
University of York English Department Undergraduate Teaching Committee, 2004 - 2005
Graduate Student Mentorship program, Cornell University, 2010 – 2011
Mentored incoming graduate students to the English department, providing advice about the academic experience at Cornell, as well as professionalization.
Dissertation Writing Group Administrator, Cornell University, 2010-2011
REFERENCES
Prof. Satya Mohanty Assistant Prof. Elizabeth Anker
Dept. of English Dept. of English
Cornell University Cornell University
321 Goldwin Smith Hall 250 Goldwin Smith Hall
Ithaca, NY 14850 Ithaca, NY 14850
(607)257-4883 (607) 280 5588
Prof. Durba Ghosh
Dept. of History
364 McGraw Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-254-5092
Curriculum Vitae – Mukti Lakhi Mangharam
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