Job title:
Associate Professor
Department:
English
Bio/CV:
Co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory, Poulomi Saha works at the intersections of American studies, psychoanalytic critique, feminist and queer theory, and postcolonial studies. They are interested in questions of racialization, regulation of gender and sexuality, and politics of resistance -- from the late 19th century decline of British colonial rule in the Indian Ocean through to the Pacific and the rise of American global power in the 20th century.
Currently, they're finishing a book about our abiding and potent obsessions with cults. Fascination is a state of rapt unbelief—the gripping curiosity and fervent disavowal of what we do not ourselves inhabit or experience and yet cannot shake. We aren’t simply frightened of or repulsed by cults. There is a powerful draw to these groups, to the possibility of utter self-transformation. At its heart, the book Fascination is interested in how cults reveal what we truly hunger for—spiritually, socially, politically, and culturally. Not just for those who join but for all of us who believe we never would. In Fascination, Saha explains why we love, hate, and love to hate cults—why we can neither lean in nor look away.
An Empire of Touch: Women's Political Labor & The Fabrication of East Bengal (Columbia University Press, 2019), Saha's first book, was awarded the Harry Levin Prize for outstanding first book in by the American Comparative Literature Association in 2020 and the Helen Tartar First Book Prize in 2017.
Role:
