Occupation: Associate Professor, English
University: University of Texas, Austin
Organizations: Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestine Solidarity Committee, USACBI, Texas State Employees Union/CWA local 6186
At UC Berkeley, I helped to start Students for Justice in Palestine in 1999. I have been involved in activism for Palestine ever since. In 2002, while a graduate student, I taught a class called “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance” that became the subject of a minor controversy. I have also been involved in anti-war activism (against the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq), immigrants rights activism, anti-sweatshop activism (as a part of the United Students Against Sweatshops), the campaign to defend Ethnic Studies (as part of the Third World Liberation Front), the movement for Black Lives, and academic workers unions (AGSE/UAW local 2865, TSEU/CWA local 6186). I teach in the English department at the University of Texas, but I also teach in Asian Studies, Asian American Studies, Islamic Studies, Religious Studies, Comparative Literature, and Undergraduate Studies. I am the author of The Mahatma Misunderstood: the politics and forms of literary nationalism in India (Anthem Books, 2013). I have also translated Munshi Premchand’s Hindi novel, Sevasadan (Oxford, 2005), the Urdu short-story collection, Angaaray (Penguin, 2014), and Bhisham Sahni’s autobiography, Today’s Pasts (Penguin, 2015), and I have a forthcoming translation of Agyeya’s Shekhar: A Life (Penguin, 2018). I have also contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.