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Aishwary Kumar

Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian History

E-mail: aishwary@stanford.edu

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At Stanford Since 2007

PhD, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, 2007; MA, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2002; BA, University of Delhi, 2000

Bio Sketch

Aishwary Kumar joined the Department in 2007. He finished his PhD in 2006 at the University of Cambridge on the moral genealogies of the ‘tribal’ and the possibility of the anti-archive in 19th and 20th century eastern India. He was Rouse Ball Fellow in History at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2006 to 2007.

Kumar’s fundamental concern is with the disruption and transformation of liberal thought by aboriginal politics. His research explores the character of what he calls the ‘ironic’, ‘romantic’, and ‘rogue’ narratives of subaltern refusal mounted against the colonial-nationalist contract of friendship; and seeks to unpack the relationship between writing, fidelity, and community. His engagement with religion and ethics extends this inquiry further into ideas of freedom, sacrifice and responsibility as these have shaped the moral reflexes in modern South Asian political thought.

Kumar’s current work charts the itinerary of political theory and conceptual practices travelling between South Asia and Europe.

Research Interests

  • Intellectual and Cultural History
  • Modernity and Ethics
  • Violence and Law in Modern Political Thought
  • Political Theology, Religious Tradition and Humanism
  • Postcolonial Theory
  • Internationalism, Socialism and Emancipation in Global Intellectual History
  • Memory, Historicism and Archive
  • Cinema, Critique and Formations of Modernity

Courses Taught

  • Modern South Asia: Colonialism, Community, Nationality
  • Critique of Violence: Historical Perspectives from Kant to Gandhi
  • History as Politics: Postcolonial Thought and the Rhetoric of Historiography
  • Reading Subaltern History

Publications:

  • ‘Spectres of Desire: The Space of Death and Rushdie’s Anxiety of Citizenship ’, The Liberal, September-October 2005
  • ‘Framing the Slave ­Self: Creole Dilemmas and Hybrid Histories’, Cambridge Anthropology, March 2006

Awards:

  • Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Doctoral Fellowship, Trinity College, Cambridge, 2003-2006
  • Rouse Fall Fellowship in History, Trinity College, Cambridge, 2006-2007

Professional Affiliations:

  • Faculty Associate in South Asian History and Politics, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge