Gaurav Desai
Gaurav Desai is a professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Author of
Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the Colonial Library (Duke University Press, 2001) and editor of
Teaching the African Novel (MLA, 2009), he has guest edited a volume of essays on “Culture and the Law” (
South Atlantic Quarterly, 100.4, 2001), on “Actually Existing Colonialisms” (
Journal of Contemporary Thought, 24, 2006), on “Asian African Literatures” (
Research in African Literatures, 42.3, 2011), and coedited a volume of essays on “Multi-Ethnic Literatures and the Idea of Social Justice” (
MELUS, 28.1, Spring 2003).
Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism (with Supriya Nair; Rutgers University Press, 2005) has become a standard reference and classroom text since its publication. His latest book on narratives of Indian Ocean connections between Africa and India,
Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2013) received the 2014 René Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association and was a finalist for the Bethwell Ogot Prize from the African Studies Association as well as the Asia-Africa Book Prize awarded by the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden.