Atreyee Phukan, PhD

Phukan’s research focuses on post-colonial world literature and theory, specifically those of the global south. Her recently published book is an examination of Indo-Caribbean literature, tracing in particular its affinity with dominant theories of cultural hybridity in the anglophone West Indies. Her new project covers literature from South Africa, Fiji, and Mauritius and attends to the development of an anti-colonial, anti-caste poetics within these (post)indenture diasporas. She also continues to collaborate on several projects with Dominik Huber (photographer) on the effects of global consumerism and anthropogenic change. Their first work, "Egyptian Wind Instruments of the Nile Delta," covered the vulnerability of the Nile Delta inhabitants, many of whom survive on forms of craftsmanship dating back to the pharaonic period (published in 2009 by ProHelvetia, The Swiss Arts Council). Their ongoing project, "Wild Silks of Assam," consists of research on the rare “wild” silks ("muga," "eri," and "paat") found only in the rainforests of Assam (in the north-east region of India) which are nearly extinct due to the destruction of the silk worm’s natural habitat.

Contradictory Indianness, Indenture, Creolization, and Literary Imaginary (Rutgers University Press Critical Caribbean Series, July 2022)

Winner of the 2023 Modern Languages Association Scaglione Prize for outstanding scholarship in South Asian diaspora studies

“South Asian migration and settlement stories,” in Caribbean Literature in Transition Volume One (1800 – 1920), eds. Evelyn O’Callaghan and Tim Watson (Cambridge University Press 2019)

“Contradictory Omens—Repatriation and resistance in Ismith Khan’s The Jumbie Bird,” in Beyond

Windrush: Rethinking Post-war West Indian Literature, J. Dillon Brown & Leah Rosenberg, eds.,

Jackson (University of Mississippi Press 2015)

South Asia and Its Others: Reading the Exotic, eds. Atreyee Phukan and V. G. Rajan (Cambridge

Scholars Press 2009)

“Landscapes of Sea and Snow: V. S. Naipaul’s Mimic Men,” in Journal of  Caribbean Literatures,

Volume 5, No. 2: 137-152 (January 2008)

Home and the World: South Asia in Transition, eds. Atreyee Phukan, V. G. Rajan, Shreerekha

Subramanian and Helen Fazio (Cambridge Scholars Press 2007)

Phukan offers courses in world literature, post-colonial studies, gender and literature, and literary theory. As a comparatist, her courses are designed to emphasize the connections rather than differences between societies and their histories. The importance of western colonization is central to her teaching of world and post-colonial literature, as also is the shaping role these literatures have had in contemporary perceptions of race, gender, and nationality. Because so much of her own research involves combining different artistic media, literary expressions are taught in tandem with creative productions in music, film, painting, and photography.