Purnima Bose
- Director, Cultural Studies Program
- Associate Professor, Department of English
- Adjunct Associate Professor, American Studies Program, Department of Comparative Literature, and Department of History
- Affiliated faculty member, Department of Gender Studies
Education
- B.A. at University of Notre Dame, 1984
- Ph.D. at University of Texas at Austin, 1993
Contact Information
| Ballantine Hall, Rm. 431 |
| (812) 855-5334 |
| www.indiana.edu/~engweb/faculty_profiles/bose.htm |
Background
I am a post-colonial scholar, whose earlier work focused on British colonialism and the links between Irish and Indian feminists and nationalists in the first half of the twentieth century. Since then, I have become interested in globalization, the role of corporations in public life, and anti-globalization resistance. This interest arises out of a desire to comprehend the local in relation to the global, and connect Indiana to India through a study of General Electric, which has a plant in Bloomington and is the largest foreign employer in India. Along with Laura E. Lyons, I am currently in the process of editing an anthology, Corporate Genealogies, which investigates the narrative strategies used by corporations such as GE and their opponents. I am also fascinated by the ways in which globalization shapes the Indian (US) diaspora and its conception of identity and history. Besides an engagement with South Asia, these seemingly different projects are united by my attention to hegemonic structures, on the one hand, and activism, on the other. I am motivated to understand how people make sense of their worlds and how they become inspired to change their circumstances. While my formal training is in Comparative Literature, my scholarship tends to be an eclectic mix of history, cultural studies, social movement theory, and feminist analysis.
Research Interests
- Post-Colonial studies
- Indian and Irish nationalism
- Indian diaspora
- Globalization
Courses Recently Taught
- Introduction to Cultural Studies
- Gender and Globalization
- Strategies of Post-Colonial Theory
Publication Highlights
Books
Organizing Empire: Individualism, Collective Agency, and India. Duke University Press, September 2003.
Articles
“Tempest in a Textbook: Who Speaks for Hinduism?” Against the Current. Forthcoming May/June 2006.
“Professor of Peace: Edward Said and the Role of the Intellectual.” In Bibhash Chouhdury, ed., Edward Said and the Politics of Culture. (Gauhati: University of Gauhati and K.B. Publications, 2005).
“Mississippi Masala, South Asian Activism, and Agency.” With Linta Varghese. In Wendy Kozol and Wendy Hesford, eds., Haunting Violations: Feminist Criticism and the Crisis of the “Real.” (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), pp. 137-168.
“Dyer Consequences: The Trope of Amritsar, Ireland, and the Lessons of the ‘Minimum’ Force Debate.” With Laura Lyons. Boundary 2. Vol. 26, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 199-229.