Swati Rana

Swati Rana is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on 20th-century American literature, comparative ethnic literature, and transnational American studies, with an emphasis on the interplay between literary forms and social structures. She explores how ethnic literature addresses minority identity and social issues through creative narratives.

Her academic contributions include the book Race Characters: Ethnic Literature and the Figure of the American Dream (2020), which examines the representation of race and form in literature. She has been recognized with awards such as the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.

Rana teaches courses on race and literature, including Creative Imagination of Racial Justice, Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Literatures, and The Craft of Poetry. Her creative writing has appeared in prestigious journals like The Paris Review and Granta.

Her research examines themes of diaspora, identity, and postcolonial frameworks, reflecting a commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship. She actively participates in academic conferences and collaborates with institutions like the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB.