Mrinalini Chakravorty

Mrinalini Chakravorty is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia and Director of Modern and Global Studies. Her research and teaching focus on postcolonial literature and film, queer theory, cultural studies, and the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. She has published extensively on transnational approaches to literary culture, aesthetic responses to globalization, and subaltern discourse in South Asian and African literature.

• B.A., University of Colorado, Boulder (summa cum laude)
• M.A., University of California, Irvine
• Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

Her seminal book In Stereotype: South Asia in the Global Literary Imaginary (2014) examines how cultural stereotypes shape global literature through themes like hunger, slums, and migration. She is currently working on The Cultural Politics of Hunger and a critical biography of Freddie Mercury titled Some Kind of Magic: Freddie Mercury as Postcolonial Performer (with Leila Neti). Her articles in journals like PMLA and Representations explore postcolonial melancholia, queer diasporas, and biocultural politics.

Chakravorty serves as Associate Editor for British and Anglophone fiction at Contemporary Literature and has lived in multiple global cities including Kolkata, Muscat, and Los Angeles. Her recent co-edited volume Spivak Moving (2023) curates Gayatri Spivak's activist-humanistic works.