Laura Brueck

Laura Brueck is an Associate Professor of Indian Literature at Northwestern University, affiliated with the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and serving as its Chair. She also holds roles as Director of Undergraduate Studies and core faculty in Gender and Sexuality Studies.

• Ph.D. in Asian Cultures and Languages, University of Texas at Austin (2006)
• Specializes in modern Hindi/Urdu language and literature, South Asian literature in translation, and socio-political themes of caste, class, and gender

Research Focus

Brueck's scholarship centers on Hindi Dalit literature and resistance writing by marginalized communities. Her book Writing Resistance: The Rhetorical Imagination of Contemporary Dalit Literature (Columbia University Press, 2023) establishes frameworks for analyzing subaltern narratives. She also explores Indian pulp fiction, particularly how 20th-century Hindi, Urdu, and English detective novels mirror societal discourses on criminality and justice.

Teaching & Publications

At Northwestern, she teaches courses on:

• Indo-Pakistani Women Writers
• Feminist Theory & Media in South Asia
• Bollywood Cinema
• Indian Epic Literature

Her translated collection Unclaimed Terrain: Stories by Ajay Navaria (Navayana Press, 2012) remains a key text in Dalit literary studies.