Arnav Adhikari is a scholar of postcolonial literature and theory, with research and teaching interests spanning modern and contemporary fiction, historical narrative, film and media studies, and political theory. His current book project traces artistic experiments with political form in Cold War South Asia. Reading across a multilingual archive of literature, cinema, and social movements, the book theorizes “processual realism” as a framework for examining shifting modes of empire at a time of fraught national self-reckoning.
Adhikari completed his PhD in English at Brown University, where he held fellowships from the Cogut Institute for the Humanities and the Center for Contemporary South Asia. His writing has appeared in Cultural Critique, Global South Studies, and Postcolonial Text, as well as in several public venues. At Mount Holyoke, Adhikari teaches courses in global literature and film, graphic narrative, and postcolonialism. In a previous life, he also worked as a journalist, editor, and curatorial researcher with a particular focus on photography.
Areas of Expertise
Postcolonial literature and theory; novel studies; South Asia; the global Cold War; film, media, and visual culture
Education
- PhD, MA, Brown University
- BA, Middlebury College
