Gayatri Mehra

Fields of Interest:  

• Anticolonial and Postcolonial Literatures, Global Anglophone Novel,  

• Postcolonial Studies, Feminist Studies, Marxist Studies, Literary Theory, Novel Theory 

• Mass and Digital Cultures, Medical Humanities. 

Education: PHD: 2025, University of California, Irvine.  

Bio:  

Gayatri’s current research focuses on 20th and 21st century anticolonial and postcolonial feminist literatures. She is currently working on her book-manuscript, tentatively titled Novel Cures: Post/Colonial Fiction and Mental Health, which excavates an archive of Global South feminist literatures invested in the representation of the psychic wounds inflicted by colonial and postcolonial societies.  

Gayatri’s teaching interests include global anglophone literatures, postcolonial novels, mass and digital cultures (especially the popular-feminist kind!), and critical theory. She has designed courses on migration, contemporary representations of mental health, and feminist cultures.  

Gayatri has previously worked as an Assistant Professor in the English departments of Gargi and Kamala Nehru College at the University of Delhi, as well as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Williams College. Gayatri received her BA, MA, and MPhil. in English from the University of Delhi. She obtained her PhD in Comparative Literature with an emphasis in Critical Theory from the University of California, Irvine. Her research has been published in Research in African Literatures and Postmodern Cultures. Her translation of the Hindi writer Rajendra Yadav’s short story (“Tension”) can be found in Indian Literature.  

Select Publications:  

Mehra, Gayatri. “The Wound and the Womb: The Politics of Reproduction and Repair in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Tambudzai Trilogy.” Research in African Literatures 55, no. 3 (2025): 144-168. https://dx.doi.org/10.2979/ral.00078. 

Bajaj, Ashwin, Gayatri Mehra, Vinay Lal, Adriana Michele Campos Johnson, and Richard Pithouse. “The Deep Futures of Subaltern Studies: Three reviews of Subaltern Studies 2.0: Being Against the Capitalocene.” Postmodern Culture 34, no. 1 (2023) https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pmc.2023.a952515.