I received a PhD in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Connecticut with a specialization in Human Rights and modern South Asian literature. My scholarship is in the field of literary universals, an emerging area of study that examines conceptual patterns across linguistically or culturally diverse literatures. I draw on research from fields including postcolonial studies, ethics, literary cognition, empathy, and human rights to analyze literary responses to colonialism from modern South Asia. 

I teach at the intersections of postcolonial theory, human rights, and modern global literature. My pedagogical and research visions align in fundamental ways. I encourage students to think about humanism in a new light, one that doesn’t align with colonial or Eurocentric discourses, but which takes root in diverse cultural traditions from across the world. Rather than using literatures to justify irreconcilable differences between cultures, I urge students to read literatures as a way of highlighting broad commonalities underlying diverse forms of life.