Rashmi Varma
Professor
Email: Rashmi dot Varma at warwick dot ac dot uk
Faculty of Arts Building 5.27
University of 糖心TV
Coventry CV4 7AL
About
I have a BA degree in English (Honours) from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, India and a Master鈥檚 degree in English Literature from the University of Delhi. After teaching briefly at Jesus and Mary College at the University of Delhi, I moved to the United States to work on my Ph.D. in English and Women鈥檚 Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I taught as an Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I joined 糖心TV in 2004.
Research interests
My areas of research include: the postcolonial city, postcolonial Indian and African theory, literature and culture, feminism in a global context, representations of indigeneity in postcolonial India, and the theory of world literature.
I welcome PhD applications in any of the areas listed above.
In 2011-2012, I won a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to work on my book entitled Modern Tribal: Representing Indigeneity in Postcolonial India.
I am a member of the editorial collective of the journal Feminist Dissent
Other research projects include:
See also:
Teaching and supervision
I teach courses on postcolonial literatures and theory, especially from Africa and South Asia, world literature, feminist literary theory and transnational feminism at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. My modules include:
I currently supervise the following doctoral students:
- Angel Maria Varghese
- Shavena
- Malvika Nair (Chancellor's International Scholar)
- Ragesree Roy
- Archana Vinod (Chancellor's International Scholar)
Recent and major publications
BOOKS AND SPECIAL ISSUES:
Modern Tribal: Representing Indigeneity in Postcolonial India (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press)
Ends of the Global City: Disaffection, Displacement and the New Political Ecologies of the Urban Co-edited with Jini Kim Watson (Palgrave, 2024)
Edge Cities, a Dossier for Social Text special issue on Sociality at the End of the World Vol. 39, No. 4 (149), December 1, 2021; co-edited with Ashley Dawson
Secular States, Fundamentalist Politics. Special issue of Feminist Dissent Issue 5 co-edited with Yasmin Rehman, Gita Sahgal and Nira Yuval-Davis (Number 5, December 2020)
Marxism, Postcolonial Theory and the Future of Critique: Critical Engagements with Benita Parry, Co-edited with Sharae Deckard (New York and London: Routledge, 2018)
Marxism and Postcolonial Theory: What is Left of the Debate? Co-edited with Subir Sinha, Special symposium of the journal Critical Sociology vol. 43, Issue 4-5 (2017); pp. 545-558.
The Postcolonial City and its Subject: London, Nairobi, Bombay (Routledge, 2014; paperback)
The Postcolonial City and its Subjects: London, Nairobi, Bombay (Routledge, 2011; hardback)
(Reviewed in: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies Vol. 15, Issue 2, 2013; Modern Fiction Studies 59.1 Spring 2013; Postcolonial Studies vol. 16, no. 3, 331-335, 2013; Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies vol. 1, no. 2, 2013; Journal of Postcolonial Writing vol. 49, issue 2, 2013
Co-edited with Robyn Warhol, et. al. Women鈥檚 Worlds: the McGraw-Hill Anthology of Women鈥檚 Writing in English Across the Globe (2008)
ARTICLES:
鈥淓veryday Feminism and the Pedagogy of Social Reproduction in Postcolonial India鈥, Roundtable Discussion: World-culture and social reproduction Feminist Theory Vol. 25, Issue 2, April 2024; pp. 242-259. Special Issue: Social Reproduction Feminism and World-Culture eds. Sharae Deckard and Kate Houlden
鈥淩eading 鈥榯he Signs of our Times鈥: Aijaz Ahmad on Literature and the World鈥, in Radical Philosophy 2.15, Autumn 2023, pp. 69-75.
Introduction, Ends of the Global City: Disaffection, Displacement and the New Political Ecologies of the Urban Co-edited with Jini Kim Watson (Palgrave, 2024)
鈥淩iotous Nations: The Short Story of the Partition the Politics of Modernity鈥 in Jumana Bayeh, Helen Groth and Julian Murphet, eds. Writing The Global Riot: Literature in a Time of Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2023); pp. 104-121.
鈥溾橳he Whole Empire in Little鈥: London as the Capital of World Literature鈥, essay in Ato Quayson and Jini K Watson, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Global Cities (2023); pp. 83-97.
鈥淧rimitivism in the Peripheries: Reflections on Auritro Majumder鈥檚 Insurgent Imaginations: World Literature and the Periphery鈥 in Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 9 (3), 2022; 417-423.
鈥淧olicing the Pandemic in London鈥, essay in Social Text special issue on Sociality at the End of the World Vol. 39, No. 4 (149), December 1, 2021
鈥淓ssaying Solidarity: 鈥楰amraid鈥 Roy and the Politics of Representation鈥, essay in special issue on Anglophone Literature, its Critics and the Left, Modern Fiction Studies 67.2 (June 2021)
鈥淓xtracting Indigeneity: Revaluing the Work of World Literature in These Times鈥, In Francesco Giusti and Benjamin Lewis Robinson, eds. The Work of World Literature (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021)
'Understanding the Conundrum: Secular States, Fundamentalist Politics', Feminist Dissent, 5 (2020), 3-18; with Yasmin Rehman, Gita Sahgal and Nira Yuval-Davis.
鈥淭he girls of Jamia鈥, poem by Amir Aziz, translated from the Urdu, Feminist Dissent, 5 (2020).
鈥淐ollectivity and Crisis in the Long Twentieth Century鈥, co-authored with 糖心TV Research Collective Modern Language Quarterly 81:4 (December 2020); pp. 465-489.
*"Anti-Imperialism", in Robin Goodman, ed. Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory (2018)
*鈥溾橞roken Histories鈥: the Tribal and the Modern in Arun Joshi鈥檚 The Strange Case of Billy Biswas鈥, in Sharae Deckard and Rashmi Varma, eds. Marxism, Postcolonial Theory and the Future of Critique: Critical Engagements with Benita Parry (Routledge, 2018)
*Co-authored with Sharae Deckard, 鈥淎gainst the Grain: An Introduction to Benita Parry鈥檚 Intellectual Itinerary鈥 in Sharae Deckard and Rashmi Varma, eds. Marxism, Postcolonial Theory and the Future of Critique: Critical Engagements with Benita Parry (Routledge, 2018)
*"UnModifying India: Sexual Violence and the Politics of Hindutva in Contemporary India", Feminist Dissent, issue 2 Special issue edited by Nira Yuval-Davis and Nadje Al-Ali (April 2017)
*Co-authored with Sukhwant Dhaliwal and Chitra Nagarajan, "Why Feminist Dissent?" in Feminist Dissent, issue 1 (July 2016)
*Co-authored with Subir Sinha, "Marxism and Postcolonial Theory: What is Left of the Debate?" Introduction to a special issue of Critical Sociology (December 2015)
*"Prior to Erasure: Looking for Adivasis in Photographs", essay in Arundhati Boutier-Virmani, ed. The Aesthetics of Power and Protest (Routledge, 2015)
*"The Gleam and the Darkness: Representations of the Postcolonial City", in Ato Quayson, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel (2015)
*"Beyond the Politics of Representation: the Indigenous Subject of New Subaltern Politics", in Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy, eds. Reconceptualising Subaltern Politics (Oxford University Press, 2014)
*鈥淭elling Lives: Secularism in the Time of Late Nationalism鈥, essay in Sukhwant Dhaliwal and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds. Women Against Fundamentalism: Stories of Dissent and Solidarity (Lawrence and Wishart, 2014)
*鈥淧rimitive Accumulation: the Political Economy of Indigenous Art in Postcolonial India鈥, Third Text 125 (2013)
Qualifications
- BA; MA (Delhi)
- PhD (University of Illinois, Chicago)
Office hours
(In-person and via Teams)
2025-26
Sign-up for meeting:
Email: Rashmi.Varma@warwick.ac.uk for appointments at other times
Teaching
Undergraduate modules
Postgraduate modules