Professor Debjani Ganguly

Professor of Literature

Areas of expertise: modern and contemporary literatures in english; world literature; history and theory of the novel; postcolonial studies; literature and human rights; literature and technology; planetary humanities

Phone: +613 9953 3716

Email: debjani.ganguly@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Melbourne Campus

ORCID ID: 0009-0003-3406-7449

Debjani Ganguly specializes in post-1945 English and global anglophone literatures. Her research is informed by postcolonial and world literary theories, new formalisms, new materialism, media ecologies, philosophies of technology and digitality, human rights discourse, and environmental concerns. She is the author of This Thing Called the World: The Contemporary Novel as Global Form (Duke 2016) and Caste, Colonialism and Counter-Modernity (Routledge 2005), and the editor of the two-volume The Cambridge History of World Literature (2021). Her third monograph, Catastrophic Modes and Planetary Realism, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. She is the general editor of the CUP monograph series, Cambridge Studies in World Literature. Debjani is a Fellow and Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and advisory board member of the Harvard Institute for World Literature, the Trinity Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin, and the Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory (Bologna).

As director of humanities institutes at the University of Virginia (2016-2023) and the Australian National University (2007-2014), Debjani Ganguly has fostered international projects and networks in the fields of environmental humanities, digital humanities, informatics, big data, and AI, human rights and refugee migration, and global south studies. Prior to her appointment at the University of Virginia, she directed the Humanities Research Centre (HRC) at ANU. Debjani completed her doctoral work at ANU in 2002 and served as tenured faculty in ANU's School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics until 2015.

Select publications

Books

2021, The Cambridge History of World Literature, 2 vols. Editor, Cambridge University Press.
2016, This Thing Called the World: The Contemporary Novel as Global Form, Duke University Press
2007, Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality: Global Perspectives, editor, Routledge.
2007, Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual, editor, Melbourne University Press
2005, Caste, Colonialism and Counter-Modernity: Notes on a Postcolonial Hermeneutics of Caste, Routledge

Journal articles and book chapters

2024, “World Literature and Cosmopolitanism,” Oxford Handbook on Cosmopolitanisms, eds. Lisa Wedeen et.al, Oxford University Press, in press
2024, “Decolonizing World Literature,” Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum, ed. Ato Quayson and Ankhi Mukherjee, Cambridge University Press, in press
2023, “Angloglobalism, Multilingualism, and World Literature”, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, published 12 March 2023, DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2023.2175418
2023, “Formal and Planetary Realism: Scales Models, Technology, Ecology,” The Oxford Handbook on Global Realisms. Ed. Katherine Bowers and Margarita Vaysman, Oxford University Press, in press.
2023, “War and Drones,” War and Literary Studies, eds. Anders Engberg-Peterson and Neil Ramsay, Cambridge University Press, pp 261-277
2022, “The Scale of Realism in the Global Novel,” Global Literary Studies: Key Concepts, eds Diana Riog Sanchez and Neus Rotger, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp137-160
2022, “The Speculative Turn in Feminist World Literature,” Feminism and World Literature, ed. Robin Goodman, London: Bloomsbury, pp 56.70
2021, “Oceanic Comparativism and World Literature,” The Cambridge History of World Literature, Cambridge University Press, pp 429-457
2020, “Catastrophic Form and Planetary Realism,” New Literary History, Vol.51, No.2, pp 419-453
2020, “The Global Novel: Comparative Perspectives,” New Literary History, Vol.51, No.2. pp v-xviii
2020, “Salman Rushdie and the World Picture of Islam”, The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Literature, Oxford: Blackwell. Volume 5: eds. B. Venkat Mani and Ken Seigneurie, pp 1-11
2019, “Opium and Indian Ocean Worlds: The Scale of the Historical Novel in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy”, MLA Volume on Amitav Ghosh, ed. Gaurav Desai and John Stratton, Modern Languages Association, pp 26-37
2017, “Humanitarian Scripts in the World Novel”, Worldmaking: Literature, Language, Culture, ed. Philippa Kelly, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
2015, “The Value of Worldmaking in Global Literary Studies”, The Values of Literary Studies, ed. Ronan McDonald, Cambridge University Press, pp 204-219
2015, “Postcolonialism’s Afterlife: The Novel after 1989”, The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel, ed. Ato Quayson, Cambridge University Press, pp 35-59.
2015, “Polysystems Redux: The Unfinished Business of World Literature,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Vol.2, No.2, pp 272-281
2014, “The World Novel, Mediated Wars, and Exorbitant Witnessing,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 1:1, pp11-31
2014, “New Topographies of the Postcolonial’, with Ato Quayson and Neil Ten Kortenaar, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 1:1, pp 1-10
2012, ‘Dalit Life-Stories’, The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture, ed. Vasudha Dalmia, Cambridge University Press, pp 142-162
2012, “The Language Question in India”, The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, ed. Ato Quayson, Cambridge University Press, pp 649-702
2011, ‘Deathworlds, The World Novel and the Human’, Angelaki, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp 145-158
2010' ‘Postcolonial Poetry in English,’ Modern Philology, Vol. 107, No. 3, pp E75-E78
2009' ‘Pain, Personhood, and the Collective: Dalit Lifestories’, Asian Studies Review, Vol. 43, No. 4 pp 429-442
2008' ‘Literary Globalism in the New Millennium’, Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp 119-133
2008' ‘Tryst with Postcolonial Destiny’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vo. 43, No.7, 16 February, pp 35-38.
2008' ‘Global Literary Refractions: Reading Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters’, English Academy Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 June, pp 249-264
2007, “100 Days in Rwanda: Trauma Aesthetics and Humanist Ethics in an Age of Terror”, Humanities Research, Vol. 15, No.2, pp 49-65
2007, “From Empire to Empire: Writing the Transnational Anglo-Indian Self in Australia”, Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 28, No 1, pp 27-40
2004, “Buddha, Bhakti and Superstition: A Post-Secular Reading of Dalit Conversion”, Postcolonial Studies, April 2004, Vol. 7, No.1, pp 49-62

Projects

2017-2020, UVA Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) grant of US$466,000 to establish a Lab in "Humanities Informatics" at the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures, University of Virginia (Principal Investigator)
2014-2016, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant of US$555,000 for CHCI-IGHERT project on integrated graduate training - a collaborative project in partnership with University of California Santacruz, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and Justus Liebig University Giessen (Germany). (Principal Investigator on behalf of Australian National University)
2010-2013, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant of US$1.293 million for Project Bamboo, a digital humanities consortium in partnership with UC Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Oxford and six other US universities. (Principal Investigator on behalf of Australian National University)
2011-2013, Australian National Data Services (ANDS) Grant of AU$350,000 to support digital infrastructure in humanities and social sciences at ANU (Principal Investigator with Doug Moncur, ANU Division of Information)
2011-2014, Australian Research Council Discovery Grant of AU$83,000 for project on 'The World Novel, Distant Suffering and Humanitarian Sensibility after 1989' (Chief Investigator)
2009-2012, Australian Research Council Discovery Grant of AU$345,000 for project on 'Mediated Mobility: India's Low Caste Revolution in the Media Age' (Chief Investigator; joint project with R. Jeffrey and Postdoctoral fellow A. Doron)
2002-2004, Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant, AU$225,000, for project on 'Caste and Postcolonial Worlds.' Centre for Cross-Cultural Research (CCR), Australian National University.

Accolades and Awards

Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; elected 2007
Fellow and Life Member, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, elected 2013
Nobel Literature Committee, Swedish Academy, invited speaker at Stockholm conference on "Literature and the Question of the Universal," 17-19 August 2022
International Assessor, The British Academy
American Academy of Berlin, Fellowships Committee, 2017-2019
Modern Language Association (MLA), Nomination Committee, Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award, 2022-2025
New York University, External Expert, Search Committee in comparative literature, 2021
Harvard University, External Expert, Search Committee in contemporary anglophone literatures, 2020
Cornell University, Review Committee, Society for the Humanities, 2019
Brown University, External Reviewer for Professorial Promotion in the Department of English, 2018
Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI), Berkeley, Board Member, 2008-2021
International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), Executive Council, 2016-2019
CLARINS (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure), a pan-European collaborative effort, Utrecht University, Executive Council 2008-2013
Project Bamboo, Advisory Board, Mellon-funded Digital Humanities Project led by Berkeley & UChicago, 2009-2013
Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres (ACHRC), Advisory Board, 2011-2015

Appointments and Affiliations

University of Virginia, Professor of English, 2016-present
Harvard University, Advisory Board, Institute for World Literature, 2014-present
University of Bologna, Advisory Board, Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory, 2016-2023
Trinity College Dublin, Advisory Board, Trinity Long Room Hub, 2022-25
University of Tubingen, Advisory Board, Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies, 2018-2023
Harvard University, Seminar Faculty, The Institute for World Literature (IWL), June-July 2015
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Halls Visiting Professor, Centre for the Humanities and Department of English, April 2015
University of Cambridge, Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, and Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, January-June 2013
University of Oxford, Wadham College, Visiting Professor, October 2013
University of Chicago, Visiting Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations & Franke Humanities Institute, March-April 2010
University of Michigan, Visiting Fellow, Institute for the Humanities, February 2010

Editorial roles

Monograph Series Editor, Cambridge Studies in World Literature, 2019-ongoing
Editorial Board, Cambridge Journal for Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2018-ongoing
Associate Editor, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2014-2018
Editorial Advisory Committee, PMLA, 2011-2015
Editorial Board, Humanities Research (2006-2015)
Editorial Committee, Postcolonial Text (2011-2015)
Manuscript reviewer for Cambridge, Oxford, Duke, Chicago, Wiley-Blackwell, Polity, Routledge
Referee for peer-reviewed journals: New Literary History, PMLA, English Literary History, Representations, Interventions, Postcolonial Studies, Diacritics, Journal of World Literature, Ariel, South Asia

Our people