Kritish Rajbhandari '12
Assistant Professor of English and Humanities
English Department
Division of Literature and Languages
My research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of South Asian and African literature, Indian Ocean cultures, postcolonial theory, and critical ocean studies. My publications can be found in Research in African Literatures, Comparative Literature, and The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. I am currently working on a book project examining how contemporary novels from South Asia and Eastern Africa reimagine the stories of cross-cultural encounter, migration, and exchange in the Indian Ocean. Engaging with critical ocean studies and oceanic humanities, it raises aesthetic and epistemological questions about the representation of sea and history in Indian Ocean literature. It is based on my PhD dissertation which was awarded the American Comparative Literature Association’s (ACLA) Charles Bernheimer Prize for the best dissertation in Comparative Literature in 2020. I also translate poetry from my mother tongue Nepal Bhasa to English. My translation of the Newar poet Durgalal Shrestha's collection of children's poetry is forthcoming in a bilingual edition from Safu publications in Kathmandu. In addition to courses in the English Department, I also teach in Reed's year-long interdisciplinary course, Humanities 110, and courses in the Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies (CRES) program.