Auritro Majumder is the author of Insurgent Imaginations: World Literature and the Periphery (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to British Literature and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Additionally, Majumder has published essays in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Critical Asian Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Interventions, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Mediations, Research in African Literatures, and South Asian Review, among others. 

He is broadly interested in comparative literature and culture from the early modern to the contemporary eras; literary and critical theory; intellectual history, and Indology. Alongside English, his research encompasses Bengali, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Spanish literatures and languages. He is currently writing a monograph on humanism and world culture. 

Appointments: 

Associate Professor, 2020—present

Assistant Professor, 2014—2020 (Affiliated with the India Studies Program since 2017) 

Education:  

Ph.D. in English, Syracuse, 2014
M.A. (First Class) in English, Jadavpur, 2009
B.A. (First Class) in English, Jadavpur, 2007 

Books: 

Majumder, Auritro. 2025. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to British Literature and Empire. Cambridge University Press. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2021. Insurgent Imaginations: World Literature and the Periphery. Cambridge University Press. Link

• Russian translation forthcoming with Academic Studies Press
• Book forum in Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium1 (2024): 1-68
• Book forum in Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 3 (2022): 399-430
• Reviewed in Comparative Literature Studies 4; Contemporary Literature 63.3; Journal of Postcolonial Writing 58.3; Mediations 35.1-2; New Formations 106; Postcolonial Studies 26.3; South Asian Review 43.1-2; Textual Practice 38.12; Wasafiri 37.1
• Review essay in Norwegian: “Subalterne i periferien, forén Eder!” (Subalterns in the Periphery, Unite!), Agora2-3 (Sep 2022): 269-287
• Interview in Portuguese: “A Periferia Contra-Ataca” (The Periphery Strikes Back), Remate de Males 1 (Jan-Jun 2021): 225-239 

Selected Essays: 

Majumder, Auritro. 2025. “Introduction: Situating British Literature and Empire.” The Cambridge Companion to British Literature and Empire. Ed. Auritro Majumder. Cambridge UP, 1-15. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2024. “Mahasweta Devi and Indian Literature from Below.” The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures. Eds. Ulka Anjaria & Anjali Nerlekar. Oxford UP, 146-161. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2024. “The Periphery Now: Response to Book Forum on Insurgent Imaginations: World Literature and the Periphery.” Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium 9.1: 57-68. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2022. “Language and the Periphery: Response to Book Forum on Insurgent Imaginations: World Literature and the Periphery.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 9.3 (Sep): 424-430. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2019. “The Literary Lumpen: The Naksha Narratives of Binoy Ghosh.” South Asian Review 39 (3-4): 321-334. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2018. “Mikhail Bakhtin: Between Historicism and Postcolonial Critique.” Journal of Multicultural Discourses 13(4): 326-333. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2018. “Toward a Materialist Critique of the Postnational: Haile Gerima’s Lukácsian Realism in Harvest 3000 Years.” Research in African Literatures 49 (1): 209-225. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2018. “World Literature, the Geist and the East, 1907-1942.” History, Imperialism, Critique: New Essays in World Literature. Ed. Asher Ghaffar (New York: Routledge): 13-28. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2017. “The Case for Peripheral Aesthetics: Fredric Jameson, the World-System and Cultures of Emancipation.” Interventions 19 (6): 781-796. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2017. “Gayatri Spivak, Planetarity, and the Labor of Imagining Internationalism.” Mediations 30 (2): 15-28. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2017. “Caste, Race, and Intellectual History: Notes on a Singular Modernity.” Crossing Borders: Essays on Literature, Culture and Society in Honor of Amritjit Singh. Eds. Tapan Basu and Tasneem Shahnaaz (Lanham: Fairleigh Dickinson UP; New Delhi: Orient Blackswan): 135-146. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2016. “Can Bengali Literature be Postcolonial?” Comparative Literature Studies 53 (2): 417-425. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2014. “The Poetics and Politics of Blackness: Literature as a Site of Transnational Contestation in Chanakya Sen’s The Morning After and Utpal Dutt’s The Rights of Man.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50 (4): 423-436. Link 

Majumder, Auritro. 2014. “Representations and Re-presentations: Reading Coca-Cola Advertising, and the Visuals of Anti-Coke Struggles in India.” Contentious Connections: Social Imagination in Globalizing South Asia. Eds. Sirpa Tenhunen and Klaus Karttunen (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing): 55-78. Link 

Majumder, Auritro (co-authored with Subho Basu). 2013. “Dilemmas of Parliamentary Communism: The Rise and Fall of the Left in West Bengal.” Critical Asian Studies 45 (2): 167-200. Link 

Recent Grants at Houston: 

President’s Circle Award, 2025

Provost Faculty Travel Grant, 2024

CLASS Book Completion Grant, 2023

McNamara Translation Fund Grant, English Dept., 2023

English Department Martha Gano Houstoun Grant, 2023

Provost Faculty Travel Grant, 2023

CLASS Book Completion Grant, 2019

William Lee Pryor College Professorship in English, 2018 

Recent Courses at Houston: 

ENGL 3301 Introduction to Literary Studies
ENGL 3322 The Contemporary Novel

ENGL 3323 Development of Literary Criticism and Theory
ENGL 3365 Postcolonial Literature* Cross-listed with the India Studies Program
ENGL 3380 Modern Indian Literature* Cross-listed with the India Studies Program
ENGL 4396 The City in Cultural Forms (Senior Experience)
ENGL 7315 Postcolonial Dialectics (Graduate)
ENGL 7369 Introduction to Postcolonial Studies (Graduate)

ENGL 7396 Globalizing Literary Studies (Graduate)
ENGL 8386 Postcolonial Narrations (Graduate)

ENGL 8386 Literary Futures and Internationalist Cultures (Graduate)