Skip to main content

Professor Radhika Mohanram

BA, MA English Literature (Madras), MA and PhD American Literature (Arizona)

Professor, English and Critical and Cultural Theory

School of English, Communication and Philosophy

Email
mohanramr1@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 (0)29 2087 6151
Campuses
1.30, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU

Overview

My research is focussed in the areas of English Literature and Critical and Cultural Theory.

I research into, and teach about, postcolonial cultural studies, whiteness, gender and race, trauma, oral history, and South Asian Fiction. 

Biography

My first job was in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and the Department of English in The University of Waikato, New Zealand. I have worked in Cardiff University since September 2000.

Visiting Appointments at the University of Venice, Italy, University of Nantes, France, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Journal Editorial Positions

  • Editor, Social Semiotics (2001-current)
  • Coeditor of SPAN (Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies), 1994-1999. (Issues 38-49)
  • Editorial Board, New Literatures Review. (2003-current)
  • Editorial Board, Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2005-current)

Publications

2020

  • Mohanram, R. 2020. Textures of Indian memories. In: Ionescu, A. and Margaroni, M. eds. Arts of Healing: Cultural Narratives of Trauma. Critical Perspectives on Theory, Culture and Politics London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International, pp. 113-132.

2019

  • Mohanram, R. 2019. Sexuality after Partition. In: Mohanram, R. and Raychaudhuri, A. eds. Partitions and their Afterlives: Violence, Memories, Living. Critical Perspectives on Theory, Culture and Politics Rowman and Littlefield

2017

2016

2013

2011

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

  • Mohanram, R. and Crane, R. J. 2002. Introduction. In: Crane, R. J. ed. Love Beseiged: A Romance of the Defence of Lucknow by Charles E. Pearce. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. ix-xxi.

2000

1999

1998

1996

1995

Teaching

I teach the following modules at undergraduate level:

  • Reading Postcolonial Fiction
  • Fiction of the Indian Subcontinent
  • Critical Theory 3: Postcolonial Theory
  • Settler Identity: Fictions of OZ/NZ

and the following for postgraduates:

  • White
  • Postcolonial/Indigenous

I supervise two PhD students on topics such as Welsh Writing within the Framework of Whiteness and Women's Writing and the Discourse of Madness.

My research interests include postcolonial cultural studies, whiteness, gender and race, trauma, oral history, and South Asian Fiction.I am the Principal Investigator of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project ‘The Afterlife of Violence’ (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FS006400%2F1) which asks how the experience of violent civil war affects refugees who are forced to leave their homes and to establish a new life in very different society. How does such experience change people's sense of who they are and where they belong? How do they cope with the processes of adapting to a new environment and eventually becoming citizens of their new country? How does this experience become part of family memory across generations? The research team, which includes the National Museum of Wales, is exploring these questions by working with refugees at different stages of assimilation in Wales. Using in-depth life story interviews and participatory workshops, we are analysing memories of war, flight, asylum-seeking and settlement in Wales, and asking how these remembered experiences affect integration.

A co-edited collection of articles on the civil war and its affects will appear in the next two years.

Between 2013 and 2015 I was Principal Investigator on the AHRC Research Network, "Partitions: What are they good for?" (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FK001949%2F1), and have recently published material on trauma, cultural memory, and the Indian Partition.

I am currently completing my monograph on the 1947 Indian Partition Forget to Remember; several chapters from this monograph have appeared as articles.

Postgraduate students

I would welcome applications from potential PhD students whose research interests intersect with mine or who work on postcolonial studies. Informal enquiries are also welcome.

Areas of expertise