I’m honored to announce that on September 23, 2024, I’ll be delivering a lecture titled “Plastic Nature” at Harvard University’s Environment Forum at the Mahindra Center. The event, moderated by Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, will delve into the intricate relationship between nature and plastic, exploring how these two have influenced and transformed each other. This lecture is part of the Forum’s ongoing series dedicated to rethinking humanity’s connection with the natural world through the lens of the arts and humanities.
I have been invited as Visiting Tagore scholar to the Institute of South Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. As Tagore Professor 2024, I shall lead the Tagore Program’s third Spring Institute with a series of classes and, finally, deliver the Distinguished Tagore Lecture 2024 on April 26th. I shall be the third Visiting Tagore Professor at the Tagore Spring Institute, UC Berkeley, after Professor Sukanta Chaudhuri and Ashis Nandy.
I have been elected as Member in Class I of the Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea, or European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Based in Salzburg, Austria, the Academy aims to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration between leading scientists, practitioners of governance, and artists, all with the goal of analyzing societal challenges and solving complex issues. Election to the Academy is a rare and prestigious honor – there are only 2,000 members in total, and its ranks of elected and honorary members include 35 Nobel Prize winners and numerous former heads of state.
I am the first Indian to be elected as Member in the Class I and the fifth Indian in the history of this eminent Academy.
I am the first Indian to be elected as Member in the Class I and the fifth Indian in the history of this eminent Academy.
I shall guest edit two major special numbers:
- “Turn to Plastic: Thinking Humanities Today”, University of Toronto Quarterly, February 2025, forthcoming, University of Toronto Press, 80,000 words.
- “Random”, Philosophy, Politics, and Critique, 2024, forthcoming, Edinburgh University Press, 72,000 words.
My new book The Plastic Turn has just come out from Cornell University Press. I was asked to share my thoughts about what brought this book about. Please see this if you are interested: https://www.
The next book of my plastic trilogy — Plastic Figures — has been contracted by Cornell University Press
Cornell University Press introduces Guest Lecturers in Art where you are welcome to invite a Cornell Press Author to speak to your Class: please see the link — Art
My book Plastic Tagore has been contracted by Oxford University Press.
My recent work on plastic/ plastic theory/ plastic humanities have come out in the following journals/sites:
- ‘Plastic History’ Clio: A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History, Vol. 49, Number 3, Summer 2022, 233-262.
- The Plastic Turn’ Diacritics, Volume 49, Number 1, 2021, 64-85 (Johns Hopkins University Press)
- ‘Plastic Controversy’ Critical Inquiry, In the Moment, February, 2021
- ‘Desiring-Material: Plastic-Art and Affect-ability’, the minnesota review issue 97, 2021, 53-76 (Duke University Press)
- ‘Plastic Pedagogy’ in Flashpoint Epistemology ed. Bernadette Baker (New York, Routledge, 2022)
- Plastic Literature’, University of Toronto Quarterly, for the special issue on ‘World Poetics and Comparative Poetics’, Vol 88, no 2, Spring 2019, 277-291.
I am the co-editor (with Emelia Quinn) of the journal The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory (published by Oxford University Press)
the latest volume (2022) is just out: https://academic.oup.com/
I have guest edited a Forum on ‘Creative Critical’ for the minnesota review (December, 2022).