Biography
Susan Koshy (Ph.D., University of California at Los Angeles, 1992) is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work draws on the insights of literature, anthropology, legal studies, and history. Her work on race, ethnicity and diaspora is part of a larger theoretical interest in modernity, neocolonialism, and the processes of globalization. Her research is situated at the conjuncture of globalization theory, postcolonial studies, and ethnic studies and interrogates the boundaries of these disciplinary formations. Her book, Sexual Naturalization (Stanford University Press, 2004) locates narratives of white-Asian miscegenation in the context of anti-miscegenation laws, Asian immigration to the US, and US expansionism in Asia. Her articles have appeared in the Yale Journal of Criticism, Boundary 2, Differences, Diaspora, Social Text, and in several anthologies. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Delhi University.
Research Interests
Susan Koshy's research is situated at the conjuncture of globalization theory, postcolonial studies, and ethnic studies and interrogates the boundaries of these disciplinary formations
Education
English, B.A., Delhi University
English, M.A., Delhi University
English, Ph.D., University of California, LA
- Ph.D., English, University of California, LA
- B.A., English, Delhi University
- M.A., English, Delhi University
Awards and Honors
Distinctions / Awards
- CAS Associate, 2010-11, Center for Advanced Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, 2005, for Sexual Naturalization
- List of Teachers Ranked Excellent, Spring 2010, ENG 280
- Ten Terrific Teachers Award, 2004, University of California, Santa Barbara
Grants
- Humanities Release Time Grant, 2006-07, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Courses Taught
- Asian American Biographies and Autobiographies
- Asian American Women Writers
- Contemporary South Asian Diasporic Literature
- Cosmopolitanism in Modern Literature and Culture
- Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature
- Introduction to Asian American Literature
- Post-Racial Formations
Additional Campus Affiliations
Director, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Associate Professor, English
Associate Professor, Asian American Studies
Associate Professor, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Intellectual Property
Book Contributions
- "The Rise of the Asian American Novel." Cambridge History of the American Novel. . Ed. Leonard Cassuto. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- "The Campaign for Fair Trials Abroad: Long-Distance Nationalism and Post-Imperial Anxiety." Just Advocacy: Human Rights, Transnational Feminism, and the Politics of Representation. . Ed. Wendy S. Hesford. Rutgers University Press, 2005. 75-98.
- "The Postmodern Subaltern: Globalization Theory and the Subject of Ethnic, Area, and Postcolonial Studies." Minor Transnationalism. . Ed. Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. 109-131.
- "Jim Crow and the Delta Lotus: Racial Strategies of the Mississippi Chinese." Journey into Otherness. . Ed. Ada Savin. Amsterdam University Press, 2005. [Reprinted with permission from Boundary 2].
- "Asian American Women’s Autobiography." Dictionary of Women’s Autobiography. . Ed. Victoria Boynton and Jo Malin. Westview Press, 2005. 66-74.
- "South Asians and the Complex Interstices of Whiteness." White Women in Racialized Spaces. . Ed. Samina Najmi and Rajini Srikanth. SUNY Press, 2002. 29-50. [Reprinted with permission from Diaspora]..
- "Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine." Resource Guide to Asian American Literature. . Ed. Stephen Sumida . MLA, 2001. 165-177.
- "The Fiction of Asian American Literature." An Asian American Studies Reader. . Ed. Min Song . Rutgers UP, 2000. 467-95.
- "The Geography of Female Subjectivity: Ethnicity, Gender and Diaspora in Mukherjee’s Fiction." Contemporary American Women Writers: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity. . Ed. Lois P. Zamora. Longman, 1998. 138-53.
- "Mother-Country and Fatherland: Re-Membering the Nation in Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days." Interventions: Feminist Dialogues in Third World Women’s Literature and Film. . Ed. Brinda Bose . Garland, 1996. 47-68.
Journal Articles
- Koshy, Susan. "Neoliberal Family Matters." American Literary History 25.2 (2013): 36.
- "Minority Cosmopolitanism." PMLA 126.3 (2011): 592-609.
- "Why the Humanities Matter for Race Studies Today." PMLA October (2008): 1252-1259.
- "Post-Colonial Studies after 9/11: A Response to Ali Behdad." American Literary History 20.1/2 (2008): 300-303.
- "American Nationhood as Eugenic Romance: D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms." Differences Spring (2001): 50-78.
- "Morphing Race into Ethnicity: Asian Americans and Critical Transformations of Whiteness." Boundary 2 28.1 (2001): 151-91.
- "From Cold War to Trade War: Neocolonialism and Human Rights." Social Text 58 (1999): 1-32.
- "Category Crisis: South Asian Americans and Questions of Race and Ethnicity." Diaspora 7.3 (1998): 285-320.
- "Turning Color: A Conversation with British Asian filmmaker Gurinder Chadha." Transition 72 (1996): 148-61.
- "The Fiction of Asian American Literature." Yale Journal of Criticism 9 (1996): 35-65.
- "The Geography of Female Subjectivity: Ethnicity, Gender, and Diaspora in Mukherjee’s Fiction." Diaspora 3 (1994): 69-84.
Website Articles
- Koshy, Susan . "South Asians and the U.S. Census: Rethinking the Normative Subject of Civil Rights." Asian Pacific American Collective History Project. 1 Jan. 2001.
Highlighted Publications
Koshy, S. (2005). Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation. (Asian America). Stanford University Press.
Koshy, S., & Radhakrishnan, R. (Eds.) (2008). Transnational South Asians: The Making of a Neo-Diaspora. Oxford University Press.
Recent Publications
Koshy, S. (Accepted/In press). Subaltern. In The Keywords Feminist Editorial Collective (Ed.), Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies (Keywords). NYU Press.
Koshy, S. (2013). Neoliberal family matters. American Literary History, 25(2), 344-380. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajt006
Koshy, S. (2012). Sex acts as assimilation acts: female power and passing in Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife and Jasmine. In D. L. Li (Ed.), Asian American Literature Routledge.
Koshy, S. (2011). Minority cosmopolitanism. PMLA, 126(3), 592-609. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2011.126.3.592
Koshy, S. (2011). The rise of the Asian American novel. In L. Cassuto (Ed.), The Cambridge History of the American Novel (pp. 1046-1063). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521899079.069