Priya Joshi Speaking at GW

Priya Joshi will present

"Rethinking the Theory of the Novel"

March 6th at 3:30 pm in Rome 771

Priya Joshi

Joshi asks:

"What theory of the novel might emerge when it is based on anti-literary forms?  How might attention to the anti-literary revise the history of the novel as it is presently conceived?"

She uses these questions to interrogate book culture in India, where English chick lit and IIT novels (here is a link where you can learn about the IIT novel) are the book culture rage. Meanwhile, "Indian novels" by authors such as Chetan Bhagat and Shobha Dé are reaching far beyond book culture and instead extending across languages and media! What does this mean? Joshi puts forth the supposition that "the future of the novel in the twenty-first century...[may be] inhabiting a zone in which it actively coexists with other forms and media, rather than obliterating or being obliterated by them.  A literary history of such coexistence remains to be written." Joshi's work provides interesting ideas of where book culture is heading as we see technology impacting our lives more and more everyday. 

Joshi is an English Professor at Temple University and the author of In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India. Currently, she is working on a semi-sequel to this monograph. As a professor and researcher, a few of Joshi's interests include the history of the book, postcolonial theory, and imperialism and its legacies. Joshi is also the founder of the New India Forum, which investigates how "India" is portrayed through the medium of culture.