Associate Professor, Director of A/PIA Studies Program and Undergraduate Advisor for the minor
mrdesai@umich.edu
Office Information:
505 S. State Street | 3658 Haven Hall
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1045
Fields of study:
Asian American Studies, Postcolonial Studies, US Popular Music
phone: 734.615.2524
Asian Pacific Islander American Studies
Education/Degree:
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2011
About
Manan Desai is the author of The United States of India: Anticolonial Literature & Transnational Refraction (2020), published by Temple University Press as part of the Asian American History and Culture Series. His essays have been published in Comparative Literature, the Journal of Popular Culture, and the recent volume of Asian American Literature in Transition, 1930-1965. He has served on the Board of Directors for the South Asian American Digital Archive (saada.org).
He is currently working on a book project entitled Imperial Vinyl that explores the development of the mid-century genre of ersatz "world music" known as Exotica. The book argues that Exotica music (and its associated visual aesthetic) produced a fantasy of containment, an imaginary which effectively used the tropes of exoticism to contain both the looming threat of the postcolonial nation and the anxiety of racial integration and citizenship in the Cold War.
On Thursday afternoons at 2, he hosts a freeform radio show called "The Syllabus" on WCBN (88.3 FM).
Affiliation(s)
- Faculty: Department of American Culture (AC), Asian/Pacific Islander American (A/PIA) Studies
