Biography
Susan Koshy (PhD, UCLA) is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work draws on the insights of literature, anthropology, legal studies, and history. Her work on race, ethnicity and diaspora is part of a larger theoretical interest in modernity, neocolonialism, and the processes of globalization. Her research is situated at the intersection of postcolonial studies, ethnic studies, and globalization theory, and interrogates the boundaries of these disciplinary formations. Her book, Sexual Naturalization (Stanford University Press, 2004) locates narratives of white-Asian miscegenation in the context of anti-miscegenation laws, Asian immigration to the US, and US expansionism in Asia. Her co-edited volumes include Colonial Racial Capitalism (Duke, 2022), Monolingualism and Its Discontents (PMLA, October 2022), and Transnational South Asians (Oxford, 2008). Her articles have appeared in PMLA, Post45, Yale Journal of Criticism, Transition, ALH, Boundary 2, Differences, Diaspora, Social Text, and in many anthologies. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Delhi University. She served as director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory (2014-2022) and is currently Faculty Fellow at the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation (OVCRI) and the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute (IHSI).
Research Interests
Susan Koshy's research focuses on race, colonialism, and capitalism in the gendered and sexualized contexts of immigration and citizenship, the formation of old and new Asian diasporas, the histories of miscegenation and cultural scripts of interracial desire, and the aesthetics of minor literary forms.
Education
English, B.A., Delhi University
English, M.A., Delhi University
English, Ph.D., UCLA
Courses Taught
Team-Taught Graduate Seminars
- In Plain Sight: Reckoning with Anti-Asian Racism, co-taught with Junaid Rana (AAS), and Soo Ah Kwon (AAS)
- Technocultural Futurisms: Code, Hack, Move, co-taught with Jodi Byrd (English/GWS), Anita Say Chan (MAC/ICR), Ben Grosser (New Media), James Hay (ICR), Trish Loughran (English), and Veronica Paredes (MACS/ICR)
- The Non-Human Turn, co-taught with Samantha Frost (Political Science), Radhika Govindrajan (Anthropology), Trish Loughran (English), and Jodi Byrd (American Indian Studies)
- Globalization: A Primer, co-taught with Mary Hancock (Anthropology)
Graduate Courses
- Engl 500: Modern Critical Theory
- Engl 563: Cosmopolitanism in Modern Literature and Culture
- Engl 563: Immigrant Fictions
- Engl 563: Literature and Globalization
- AAS 561/GWS 561/AFRO 531/LLS 561/ANTH 565: Race and Cultural Critique
- Engl 581/AAS 590: Race and Neoliberalism
- Engl 563: Diaspora Theory and Fiction
- Engl 581: Post-Racial Formations
Undergraduate Courses
- Engl 285: Global Fictions
- Engl 300: New Racial Subjectivities in Contemporary American Literature
- Engl 461/AAS 484/ANTH 484: Contemporary South Asian Diasporic Literature
- Engl 286/AAS 286: Introduction to Asian American Literature
- Engl 301: Critical Approaches to Literature
- AAS 100: Introduction to Asian American Studies
- Engl 280/AAS 299/GWS 280: Asian American Women Writers
- Engl 460/AAS 490: Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature
- Engl 461: Fictions of Immigration in the U.S. and Britain
Additional Campus Affiliations
Faculty Fellow, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation (OVCRI) and IHSI
Associate Professor, English
Affiliate Faculty, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Affiliate Faculty, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Affiliate Faculty, Women and Gender in Global Perspectives
Intellectual Property
Book Contributions
Books
Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation (Stanford University Press, 2004). Winner of the 2005 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award.
Edited Collections
Colonial Racial Capitalism, eds. Susan Koshy, Lisa Marie Cacho, Jodi A. Byrd, and Brian Jefferson (Duke University Press, 2022).
“Monolingualism and Its Discontents,” eds. Christopher Cannon and Susan Koshy, Theories and Methodologies, PMLA (October 2022).
Transnational South Asians: The Making of a Neo-Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2008), eds. Susan Koshy and R. Radhakrishnan.
Articles
“Monolingualism and Its Discontents,” with Christopher Cannon, PMLA (October 2022).
“Manifest Diversity and the Empire of Finance.” Post45 (September 2022).
“Neoliberal Family Matters.” American Literary History 25.2 (2013): 344-80.
“Minority Cosmopolitanism.” PMLA 126.3 (May 2011): 592-609.
“Why the Humanities Matter for Race Studies Today.” PMLA 123.5 (Oct 2008): 1252-59.
“Post-Colonial Studies after 9/11: A Response to Ali Behdad.” American Literary History 20.1/2 (2008): 300-03.
“Morphing Race into Ethnicity: Asian Americans and Critical Transformations of Whiteness.” Boundary 2 28 (Spring 2001): 151-91.
“American Nationhood as Eugenic Romance: D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms.” Differences (Spring 2001): 50-78.
“From Cold War to Trade War: Neocolonialism and Human Rights.” Social Text 58 (1999): 1-32.
“Category Crisis: South Asian Americans and Questions of Race and Ethnicity.” Diaspora 7.3 (1998): 285-320.
“Turning Color: A Conversation with British Asian filmmaker Gurinder Chadha.” Transition 72 (Winter 1996): 148-61.
“The Fiction of Asian American Literature.” Yale Journal of Criticism 9 (Fall 1996): 35-65.
“The Geography of Female Subjectivity: Ethnicity, Gender, and Diaspora in Mukherjee’s Fiction.” Diaspora 3 (1994): 69-84.
Book Chapters
“Introduction: Colonial Racial Capitalism,” with Lisa Marie Cacho, Jodi A. Byrd, and Brian Jefferson, in Colonial Racial Capitalism, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 1-30.
“Subaltern,” in Keywords in Gender and Sexuality Studies, ed. Aren Aizura et al. (New York: New York University Press, 2021), 228-234.
“Sex Acts as Assimilation Acts,” in Asian American Literature, ed. David Leiwei Li (New York: Routledge, 2012). [Reprinted from Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation with permission from Stanford UP].
“The Rise of the Asian American Novel,” in Cambridge History of the American Novel, ed. Leonard Cassuto et al (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1047-64.
“Introduction,” Transnational South Asians: The Making of a Neo-Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2008), eds. Susan Koshy and R. Radhakrishnan, pp. 1-41.
“The Campaign for Fair Trials Abroad: Long-Distance Nationalism and Post-Imperial Anxiety,” in Just Advocacy: Human Rights, Transnational Feminism, and the Politics of Representation,” eds., Wendy Sue Hesford and Wendy Kozol (Rutgers University Press, 2005), 75-98.
“The Postmodern Subaltern: Globalization Theory and the Subject of Ethnic, Area, and Postcolonial Studies,” in Minor Transnationalism, eds., Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 109-31.
“Asian American Women’s Autobiography,” in Dictionary of Women’s Autobiography, eds., Victoria Boynton and Jo Malin (Westview Press, 2005), 66-74.
“Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine,” in Resource Guide to Asian American Literature, eds., Stephen Sumida and Sau-ling Cynthia Wong (MLA, 2001), 165-77.
“Mother-Country and Fatherland: Re-Membering the Nation in Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days,” in Interventions: Feminist Dialogues in Third World Women’s Literature and Film, eds., Brinda Bose and Bishnupriya Ghosh, (Garland, 1996), 47-62.
Online articles
- Koshy, Susan . "South Asians and the U.S. Census: Rethinking the Normative Subject of Civil Rights." Asian Pacific American Collective History Project. 1 Jan. 2001.
Honors & Awards
Distinctions/Awards
- Faculty Fellow, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation (OVCRI) and Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute (IHSI), 2022-2024
- Conrad Humanities Professorial Scholar, 2014-2019
- CAS Associate, 2010-11, Center for Advanced Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- Kimmerling Endowed Chair at Tulane University (declined), 2014
- Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, 2005, for Sexual Naturalization
- List of Teachers Ranked Excellent in Spring 2005, Fall 2005, Spring 2006, Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2011, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020
- Ten Terrific Teachers Award, 2004, University of California, Santa Barbara
Grants
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Co-PI, “In Plain Sight: Reckoning with Anti-Asian Racism,” Chancellor’s Call to Address Racism and Social Injustice Research Program, 2021-22, $75,000
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PI, David Dodds Henry Award for Interdisciplinary Research, 2017-18, $21,000
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Humanities Release Time Grant, 2006-07, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Faculty Fellow, Center for Democracy in a Multi-Racial Society Fellowship, 2006-07 (declined)
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Faculty Career Development Award, UCSB, 1996-97, 1998-99, 1999-2000
Highlighted Publications
Koshy, S., Cacho, L. M., Byrd, J., & Jefferson, B. J. (Eds.) (2022). Colonial Racial Capitalism. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023371
Cannon, C., & Koshy, S. (Eds.) (2022). Monolingualism and Its Discontents. PMLA, 137(5).
Koshy, S. (2022). Manifest Diversity and the Empire of Finance. Post45, (8).
Koshy, S., & Radhakrishnan, R. (Eds.) (2008). Transnational South Asians: The Making of a Neo-Diaspora. Oxford University Press.
Koshy, S. (2005). Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation. (Asian America). Stanford University Press.
Koshy, S. (2013). Neoliberal family matters. American Literary History, 25(2), 344-380. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajt006
Recent Publications
Cannon, C., & Koshy, S. (2022). Introduction to “Monolingualism and Its Discontents”. PMLA, 137(5), 771-778. https://doi.org/10.1632/S0030812922000864
Cannon, C., & Koshy, S. (Eds.) (2022). Monolingualism and Its Discontents. PMLA, 137(5).
Koshy, S., Cacho, L. M., Byrd, J., & Jefferson, B. J. (Eds.) (2022). Colonial Racial Capitalism. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023371
Koshy, S., Cacho, L. M., Byrd, J., & Jefferson, B. J. (2022). Introduction. In S. Koshy, L. M. Cacho, J. A. Byrd, & B. J. Jefferson (Eds.), Colonial Racial Capitalism (pp. 1-30). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023371-001
Koshy, S. (2022). Manifest Diversity and the Empire of Finance. Post45, (8).