Dr Karen D’Souza
I was appointed to the Literature team in 2007 and have taught widely across literary periods and genres at undergraduate level. My main areas of teaching are in Renaissance literature and contemporary and postcolonial fiction and theory. I teach on LIT 3101 ‘Make It New: Modernism’ and LIT 3108 ‘Empire and Identity’. Last year I introduced the ‘Imaginary Homelands’ module which explores contrasting images and constructions of identity within the location of contemporary Britain post 9/11.
My research and publication interests are in the broad and evolving field of world literatures in English, and I am currently writing on the postcolonial modernisms of Katherine Mansfield and Anita Desai. My PhD research develops a historical understanding of South Asian women’s writing within specific nationalist cultures.
Research
- Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
- Postcolonial Feminist Theory
- South Asian Women’s Writing
- Emergent Arab Anglophone Fiction
- Diaspora and Migrant Writing
Publications
- D’Souza, K, and Shakur,T., Picturing South Asian Culture in English, Open House Press, 2003
- ‘Translating Culture: South Asia from Text to Global Screen’ in Fade In (quarterly film magazine published by Rainbow Film Society), January 2004
- Locating Agency Around the Funeral Pyre: Representation of Sati in Indian Women’s Writing’ in South Asian Cultural Studies (SACS), 2007
- ‘Anita Desai’s ‘The Rooftop Dwellers’ – An Alternative Subaltern History” Chapter to be included in The Short Story, ed. Ailsa Cox, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009
- ‘Forthcoming publication: ‘Modernist Constellations: Colonial Experience and Staging a Feminist Aesthetic’ Chapter to be included in The Postcolonial Short Story eds. Paul March-Russell (University of Kent) and Maggie Awadalla (Imperial College)