Madhumita Lahiri is an associate professor in the English department at the University of Michigan, with an additional affiliation in the Department of Film, Television, and Media. Her research focuses on the intersections of language ideology, political movements, and aesthetic forms. She works in a field now variously named postcolonial literature, world literature, or global Anglophone; in regional terms, her work focuses on South Asian, southern African, and African American literature (with the occasional foray into cinema studies).
1) Tell me about yourself.
After finishing high school in New Delhi, I went to Yale for my undergraduate degree. I majored in mathematical economics and English. English was supposed to be just for fun, but sometimes fun is life-changing: I went on to get a Ph.D. in English from Duke. I then held research and teaching positions in South Africa (the University of the Witwatersrand) and the United Kingdom (the University of Warwick), as well as a postdoc at Brown University, before joining the University of Michigan’s English department in 2014.
The University of Michigan and Ann Arbor have been wonderful for me and my family: my partner is also an academic focusing on Chinese literature, and my three-year-old is delighted with the many excellent sandboxes in this town.
2) Tell me about your work and your research.
I study the stories that large, multiethnic democracies – like India, South Africa, and the United States – tell themselves about identity, community, and what counts as appropriate politics. In my first book, Imperfect Solidarities, published by Northwestern University Press in 2020, I analyzed the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, M.K. Gandhi, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Tagore, who lived in Bengal, wrote extensively about China and Japan; Gandhi, famously Indian, lived and wrote about the problems of South Africa; and Du Bois, the iconic African American intellectual, consistently wrote about India for his Black American readership. I argued that these famous intellectuals were practicing what I called print internationalism: coining new terms within the worldwide hegemony of the English language (“the global Anglophone”) to encourage alternate geographies (such as the Global South) and new collectivities (such as people of color).
I’m currently writing a book titled “How We Hate Now: Xenophobia in the Age of Antiracism.” Ever since the shutdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve felt that we’re arguably entering a more bordered, less global world, one in which immigrants are widely perceived in negative terms. And I’ve found this shift across a wide variety of texts, from fiction to nonfiction, from poetry to public policy.
My favorite class to teach is an introductory Bollywood course that I run each winter. The students are enthusiastic, and we have so much fun: a joyful three-hour film over the weekend and then a serious scholarly reading paired with each film.
3) What do you think the center offers on campus and in the surrounding community?
Southeast Michigan is a fascinating place in terms of its many diverse and intermingled communities. The center offers a space to have serious conversations about the subcontinent across boundaries of nation, region, and religion — and to have a lot of fun, too. I have been delighted by the varied audiences our events can attract, and I am also looking forward to the events we have this year.
4) Why take on this new role as CSAS director? What drew you to the job?
The center has been a wonderful place for me. I’ve learned a lot and made some very good friends, too. I’m fascinated by how professional scholarship can relate to a broader public outside the university, and CSAS’s remit allows me to think through some of those questions in real time. As you’ll see from this year’s events calendar, we have something for everyone.
5) What are you hoping to achieve this year at the center?
I hope to keep building on the center’s successes, connecting our intellectual conversations on campus to wider communities and the public.
