Ranjana Khanna is a literary critic and theorist

Literary theory

Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...

 widely recognized for her interdisciplinary, feminist

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 and internationalist

Internationalism (politics)

Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...

 contributions to the fields of post-colonial studies, feminist theory

Feminist theory

Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...

, literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 and political philosophy

Political philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...

. She is best known for her work on melancholia

Melancholia

Melancholia , also lugubriousness, from the Latin lugere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, , in contemporary usage, is a mood disorder of non-specific depression,...

 and psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

, but has also published extensively on questions of post-colonial agency, film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

, area studies, autobiography, Marxism, the visual and feminist theory. She received her Ph.D in 1993 from the University of York

University of York

The University of York , is an academic institution located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects...

. She has taught at the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

 in Seattle and at the University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

, and in 2000 began teaching at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

, where she is the Margaret Taylor Smith Director of Women’s Studies, and Professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of English, Literature and Women’s Studies. The originality of her thinking and her careful engagement with and close readings of diverse thinkers such as Derrida, Irigaray, Kant

KANT

KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...

, Marx, Heidegger, Beauvoir

Beauvoir

Beauvoir can refer to any of the following:Buildings*Beauvoir , post-American Civil War home of Confederate States of America President Jefferson DavisPeople*Jean Beauvoir, American musician....

, Spivak

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian literary critic, theorist and a University Professor at Columbia University. She is best known for the essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?", considered a founding text of postcolonialism, and for her translation of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. She...

and others is particularly evident in her theorizations of subjectivity and sovereignty in her recent work on disposability, indignity, and on the concept and practice of asylum. She travels frequently and gives talks around the world. She is also known for her attentiveness to teaching and mentoring of her students.

External links

• http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/WomensStudies/faculty/rkhanna
• http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/English/faculty/rkhanna

Books

• Algeria Cuts: Women and Representation, 1830 to the Present. Stanford University Press. 2007.
• Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism. Duke University Press. 2003.

Articles

• "Racial France, or the Melancholic Alterity of Postcolonial Studies." Public Culture (2011).
• "Unbelonging: In Motion." Differences (2010).
• "Technologies of Belonging: Sensus Communis, Disidentification." Communities of Sense (2009).
• "Disposability." Differences. (2009).
• "Indignity." Positions 16:1 (2008).
• "Fabric, Skin, Honte-ologie." Shame and the Visual Arts (2008).
• "From Rue Morgue to Rue des Iris." Screen 48:2 (2007): 237-44.
• "Indignity." Ethnic and Racial Studies 30:2 (2007): 257-80.
• R. Khanna and Srinivas Aravamudan. "Interview with Fredric Jameson." ed. Ian Buchanan, Fredric Jameson, Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism (2007): 203-240.
• "Post-Palliative." Postcolonial Text 2:1 (2006). [viewarticle.php]
• "Asylum." Texas International Law Journal 41:3 (2006): 471-90.
• "Frames, Contexts, Community, Justice." Summer 2003. However, the issue appeared in November 2005. Diacritics 33:2 (2005): 11-41.
• "On Asylum." SAQ (2005).
• R. Khanna. "Signatures of the Impossible." Duke Journal of Law and Gender Policy (2004).
• "Latent Ghosts and the Manifesto." Art History: Journal of the Association of Art Historians 26:2 (April, 2003): 244-286.
• "Baya (translation)." Art History: Journal of the Association of Art Historians 26:2 (April, 2003): 287.
• "Le Combat de Baya (translation)." Art History: Journal of the Association of Art Historians 26:2 (April, 2003): 288-289.
• R. Khanna. ""Frames, Contexts, Community, Justice"." Meaning, Frame, and Metaphor (March, 2002): 149-171.
• "Taking a Stand for Afghanistan." Signs 28:1 (Fall, 2002): 464-5.
• with R. Khanna, Barbara Burton, Nouray Ibryamova, Dyan Ellen Mazurana, and S. Lily Mendoza. "Cartographies of Scholarship: The Ends of Nation-States, International Studies, and the Cold War." Encompassing Gender: Integrating International Studies and Women's Studies (2002): 21-45.
• "The Experience of Evidence: Language, Law and the Mockery of Justice." Algeria in and Out of French (January, Jan. 2001).
• "The Ambiguity of Ethics: Specters of Colonialism." Feminist Consequences: Theory for the New Century (January, 2001).
• "Cartographies of Scholarship." With Mendoza, Mazurana, Burton and Ibryamova Area & International Studies Curriculum: Integration Book (January, 2000).
• "From Third to Fourth Cinema." Third Text (1998): 13-32.
• "'Araby' (Dubliners): Women's Time and the Time of the Nation." Refereed Joyce, Feminism, Colonialism/Postcolonialism/European Joyce Studies (1998): 81-101.
• "The Construction of the Dark Continent: Agency as Autobiography." Women's Lives/Women's Times (December, Dec. 1997): 103-20.
• with R. Khanna and Karen Engle. "Forgotten History: Myth, Empathy, and Assimilated Culture." Feminism and the New Democracy (1997): 67-80.
• "Feminism and Psychoanalysis: Repetition, Repression and the Unconscious." New Directions in Cognitive Science (1995): 358-67.

Other

• November DukeReads with Ranjana Khanna. The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga, presented by Ranjana Khanna. Nov.11th, 2009, 7:00pm. Link: http://www.dukereads.com/books.php?year=2009&id=2
• R. Khanna. "Participant in MLA Radio Program “What’s the Word?” on Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers." 2006.
• R. Khanna. "“From Exile to Asylum” Audio section of Bloomsday 100 created by The James Joyce Center, Bloomsday 100, and Hyperfecto CD-Rom 2005." . 2005.
• R.Khanna. "Review of Emily Apter's Continental Drift: From National Characteristics to Virtual Subjects". (U of Chicago P 1999), MLQ 61:4 (December, Dec. 2000): 692-695.
• R.Khanna. "Review of Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism". Signs 26:1 (Fall, 2000): 262-5.

Upcoming