Department of English

• Friday, May 1, 2026 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm

Online only (Zoom)

On Friday, May 1, Avni Sejpal will defend her dissertation "Inhospitable Futures: Sex, Work, and the Crisis of Realism After Decolonization." Avni writes:

“Inhospitable Futures” narrates a literary counterhistory of postcolonial worldmaking animated by its surplus reproductive workers rather than its storied bourgeois intellectuals. Taking its cue from archival marginalia about twentieth century decolonization, this project examines narrative and political economies of sex and care work as a critical concern for postcolonial literary history--both an animating condition and a limit point for realism across the decolonizing world. Reading a range of canonical writers across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Asian Caribbean, including VS Naipaul, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and Anita Desai, this project identifies character and genre as the formal grounds upon which itineraries of reproductive life are negotiated and rewritten. Tracking the fortunes of the postcolonial nation from the midcentury utopia of anticolonial revolution through Cold War and neoliberal crisis, "Inhospitable Futures" ultimately argues that reproductive life and labour constitute a surplus to transform our accounts of realism and labour on the global periphery.

The public portion of the defense will take place on Zoom at 4 pm EDT (please contact Avni for the link). 

We hope to see you there as we congraulate Avni on this wonderful achievement!