Scroll down to see my TEACHING in institutional settings.
SUMMER 2024 SERIES
Hi. I’m offering low-cost, short courses this summer on the administrative aspects of the writing life because they are rarely discussed in institutional settings yet crucial, especially for emerging writers from historically marginalized communities. These courses are designed after considering the most frequent questions my writing students ask me. Seats are limited and offered on first-come, first serve basis. Email (see contact) to enroll.
INSTITUTIONAL TEACHING
Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles, July 2015--Present
HNRS 138: Empire, Border-crossing, and Multiethnic Storytelling, Fall 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, and Spring 2021 (Honors Seminar)
Exploration of postcolonial and transnational studies through contemporary American multiethnic literature. Close-reading of literary fiction and nonfiction by Aimé Césaire Cisneros, Jhumpa Lahiri, Justin Torres, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Cathy Park Hong, bell hooks Angela Garbes, Louise Erdrich, Camille T. Dungy, Natalie Diaz, Elissa Washuta, Imani Perry, Amitav Ghosh, Cara Page, Erica Woodland et al, along with critical texts by Edward Said, Edouard Glissant, Robert Young, Ania Loomba, Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde, Lionnet and Shih, and many more.
Asia Am 112 C: Asian American Creative Nonfiction: Creative Writing and Critical Thinking, Spring 2022 and 2023 (Workshop for Asian American Studies Department)
Workshop on the reading and writing of 21st century Asian American creative nonfiction (CNF) that is sensitive to issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, migration, and social justice at large, in addition to conventionally understood aesthetic concerns. Will include close-reading of nonfiction by Mathew Salesses, Jhumpa Lahiri, Cathy Park Hong, Gish Jen, Porochista Khakpour, Rafia Zakaria, Esme Weijun Wang, and many more.
HNRS 138: Empire, Globalization, and Multiethnic Storytelling, Winter and Fall 2017 (Honors Seminar)
Exploration of postcolonial & transnational studies through the form of predominantly American multiethnic short story. How does multiethnic storytelling question the literary conventions of allegedly mainstream, white Euro-American fiction? Primary and secondary texts will include works by Aimé Césaire, Sandra Cisneros, Salman Rushdie, ZZ Packer, Roxane Gay, Claire Vaye Watkins, Robert Young, and others.
ENGL 137: Multiethnic Short Fiction, Spring 2017 (Creative Writing Workshop)
An intensive workshop on the reading and writing of short fiction that is sensitive to issues of race, ethnicity, and migration, in addition to generic aesthetic concerns.
ENGL 181: Empire, Border-Crossings, and the Multiethnic Essay, Spring 2017 (Seminar)
Exploration of postcolonial studies through the literary essay to answer the following questions: How do our primary texts question or subvert the aesthetic assumptions of a “mainstream,” white, Euro-American essay? What manifestations of empire, diasporic mobility, and generic mutability unite and/or separate our primary texts? What aesthetic or critical possibilities do our primary texts open up for the future of postcolonial & multiethnic literary studies? Close-reading of literary non-fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie, Roxane Gay, Zadie Smith, Teju Cole, Amitav Ghosh, Gish Jen, along with other creative and critical texts to unpack concepts like genre, identity (understood through the lens of race, class, gender, sexuality, culture, and/or nationality), hybridity, transnationalism, vernacular, place, and ecology.
ENGL 131: Islands, Oceans, and Postcolonial Literature, Fall 2016
From romanticism’s pastoral idylls to global tourism’s commodification of islands, “contained” coastal spaces remain vulnerable to a long-standing history of imperialist domination – discursive or material. This course will examine the historic and cultural dynamism of islands and oceans (Caribbean, Atlantic, Pacific, Indian Ocean), their negotiation with changing avatars of empire and the unique vantage point an islander imagination offers toward debates on empire, place, otherness, ecology, modernity, globalization, and multiculturalism. Primary texts will include contemporary fiction by Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje, Tiphanie Yanique, Roxane Gay, Cristina Henríquez, and others, along with several essays of literary and cultural criticism.
ENGL 128: Migration, Storytelling, and Postcolonial Hybrids, Fall 2016
Exploration of postcolonial studies through hybrid works that play with forms of the essay, memoir, novel, and the short story. How do our primary texts question literary conventions of more easily classified genres & “mainstream” white, Euro-American storytelling? In what unique ways do they tell us a “story,” and by employing which “original” narrative strategies? What manifestations of empire, diasporic mobility and generic fluidity unite or separate our key texts? What aesthetic and critical possibilities do hybrid forms open up for postcolonial & diaspora studies with their strong penchant toward fragmented, hyphenated identities? Primary texts include critical and creative works by Amitav Ghosh, Amitava Kumar, Edwidge Danticat, Laila Lalami, Vivian Gornick, Robert Young, and others.
ENGL 128: Empire, Diaspora, and Multiethnic Storytelling, Spring 2016
Exploration of postcolonial and transnational studies, predominantly through the American multiethnic short story.
Primary Texts include: Robert Young: Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction; Sandra Cisneros: Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories; Gish Jen: Who’s Irish?; Justin Torres: We the Animals; Tania James: The Aerogrammes; Nathan Englander: What We Talk about when we talk about Anne Frank; Salman Rushdie: Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
ENGL 134: Nationalism, Transnationalism, and Multiethnic Short Story, Winter 2016
Exploration of the relationship between literature, language, genre, and identity as it unfolds through building, unbuilding, and rebuilding of nation-space in multiethnic short fiction. How does the rise of print, cinematic, and/or digital culture affect a history of the short story? What specific reiterations, mutations, or collapse of the nation-space does the short story highlight? Compared to its narrative siblings (tale, fable, or novel), and fueled by rich history of oral circulation, could the multiethnic short story be a sociopolitically subversive form par excellence?
Primary Texts include: Robert Young: Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction; Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities; Muhsin Mahdi (Ed) & Hussain Haddawy (translator): The Arabian Nights; Salman Rushdie: East, West; Alice Walker: In Love and Trouble – Stories of Black Women; Sherman Alexie: Ten Little Indians; Roxane Gay: Ayiti; Junot Díaz: This is how you lose her
ENGL 131: The Postcolonial Short Story: Context, Craft and Criticism, Fall 2015
Exploration of postcolonial studies by focusing on contemporary short stories by diasporic writers from Africa, Caribbean and South Asia. How does the postcolonial short story resist, subvert and/or question the literary conventions of an allegedly mainstream, white Anglo-American short fiction? What craft and critical concerns distinguish the works of below writers from their local and/or global peers? What manifestations of empire, socio-cultural mobility and generic mutability unite and separate our primary texts? What aesthetic and critical possibilities do our primary texts announce for the future of postcolonial literature?
Primary Texts include: Robert Young: Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction; Jamaica Kincaid: At the Bottom of the River; Patrick Chamoiseau: Creole Folktales; Edwidge Danticat: Krik? Krak!; Junot Díaz: Drown; Vikram Chandra: Love and Longing in Bombay; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Thing around your Neck; Rajesh Parameswaran: I’m an Executioner: Love Stories
ENGL 181: South Asian Short Fiction, Fall 2015 (Seminar)
Exploration of South Asian short story by surveying the region’s local and diasporic works from antiquity to 21st century. What generic traits distinguish the short story from its longer and shorter narrative counterparts – be it the novel, novella, prose poem, fable or tale? What distinguishes South Asian short fiction from its Western (especially white, Anglo-American) counterparts? Which literary ancestors and contemporaries are our primary texts carrying a dialogue with, and how? Since the novel’s recent historic popularity, is the short story headed toward an inevitable decline, or a resurrection, particularly suited to our globalized age of high geo-cultural and technological mobility?
Primary Texts: The Jatakas : Birth Stories of the Boddhisatta; Visnu Sarma: The Panchatantra; Muhsin Mahdi (Ed) & Hussain Haddawy (translator): The Arabian Nights; Saadat Hassan Manto: Selected Stories; R.K. Narayan: Malgudi Days; Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories; Bharati Mukherjee: The Middleman and Other Stories; Salman Rushdie: East, West; Nina McConigley: Cowboys and East Indians
Visiting Faculty, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, India, Winter 2014
“Storytelling, Research and Criticism,” senior seminar in Mass Media
Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, September 2010--June 2012
GLBL St 188: Postcolonial Island Literature and Theory (Global Studies Seminar)
GLBL ST 191: Islands, Empire and Globalization (Global Studies Seminar)
AFRC ST 191B: African Diasporic Literature: Insularity and Transnationalism (African Studies Seminar)
FRNCH 136: French and Francophone Autobiography (Seminar)
Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2009
FRE 231: Francophone Cinema (Part-time; Substituted Dr. Lydie Moudileno)
FRE 140: Introduction to Francophone Cultures
Teaching Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2003--Spring 2006
Elementary and Intermediate French
Visiting Faculty, Kishinchand Chellaram College, Mumbai, July--November 2004
“European Languages and Cultural Hegemony,” upper division seminar in Heritage Management
Lecturer, University of Mumbai, June 2001--May 2002
French literature and translation skills for Advanced Diploma students in French