Indira Karamcheti
Associate Professor of American Studies
255 High Street, 205860-685-3625
Chair, American Studies
Associate Professor, Education Studies
Coordinator, Caribbean Studies
BA University Calif Santa BarMA University Calif Santa Bar
PHD University Calif Santa Bar
Indira Karamcheti
Indira Karamcheti's work focusses on the South Asian Diaspora, Caribbean Studies, translation, children's literature, and cultural geography. Her scholarship and teaching raise questions of authority: literary, cultural, ethnic/racial, geographic, personal. Articles such as "The Graves of Academe" and "Caliban in the Classroom" explore the question of literary canonization and the bases for the pedagogical authority of the minority teacher. Classes such as "Prizing the Book" and "The Nobel Writers" bring these issues to the attention of students in the classroom.
Current projects include oral histories of South Asians who immigrated to the U.S. between 1945 and 1965, the era of the Cold War and the "Barred Zones"; and translations of Aimé Césaire's Toussaint Louverture and Raphaël Confiant's La Panse du chacal. Her longstanding interest in the South Asian diaspora is reflected in archival research on the French Imperial use of South Asian indentured labor in the Caribbean sugar plantation sof Martinique.
Among classes taught are:
- Colonialism and Its Consequences
- New England and Empire
- Writing in the South Asian Diaspora
- Childhood in America
- History of American English
- Sites of the Self: Maps, Gardens, Houses
Selected Published Work:
Born in India, immigrating to the U.S. at an early age, educated here with brief forays in Switzerland and Ghana, Indira Karamcheti has long been intrigued by questions of cultural geography; translation cultural, linguistic, and personal; and the problematics of self-(re)presentation. Trained in literary studies, specializing in postcolonial literature and theory, the history of literary theory, and medieval and Old English literature, she was engaged by the English Department of Wesleyan University in 1990, and moved her departmental affiliation to the American Studies Department in 2013.
Academic Affiliations
Office Hours
Spring 2021 Office Hours on Zoom: Mondays, 3-5 and by appointment (for appointment, please email at ikaramcheti@wesleyan.edu)
Office Hours, Spring 2021
https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/91968723361?pwd=TEg2WFJRaFJDNmhjc3prSjlwQlM2Zz09
Meeting ID: 919 6872 3361
Courses
Spring 2021
AMST 178 - 01
Intro to American Studies
AMST 245 - 01
Personalizing History