Ajay Kumar Batra
Assistant Professor of English
Ajay Kumar Batra is a literary and cultural historian working at the intersection of hemispheric American studies, slavery studies, and Black studies. His current book manuscript, Radiant Ephemera: Abolition in the Black Atlantic, examines the convergences of abolitionism and communism that surface in African diasporic literature and politics during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 2021 and, from 2021-23, was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Southern California.
Specialization(s)
African Diasporic Literature before 1900 | Hemispheric American Literature before 1900 | Cultures of Slavery and Emancipation | Colonialism & Postcolonialism | Racial Capitalism | Histories of Race & Caste | Autobiography | Poetry & Poetics | Archival Theory & Practice | Critical Race & Ethnic Studies | Critical Prison Studies | Critical Theory | Black Studies | Abolition