Dr Manasvin Rajagopalan (he/they) holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, with a Designated Emphasis in the Study of Religion, from the University of California, Davis, where he also completed his Masters. Focusing on the premodern and early modern expressive cultures of South Asia and Western Europe– specifically France, he is interested in theatrical and multimodal performance history, criticism, and literary aesthetics. His doctoral work interrogated methodologies of comparison across cultural and spatio-temporal discontinuities and disconnections, mobilising Tamil poetics to read French canonical texts. Manasvin’s research interests run the gamut of the interdisciplinary humanities, including art history, translation studies, food studies, performance studies, queer studies, religious studies, medical humanities, environmental humanities, and the social sciences. His work has previously been supported by generous funding from the College of Letters and Sciences at UC Davis, and the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies, among others.

Manasvin’s research trajectory was established at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts in Pune, where he earned his BA in Liberal Arts, majoring in Psychology, with minors in Anthropology and Peace & Conflict Studies. As such, he sees himself as a comparative generalist, and showcases this breadth of interdisciplinary interest in his teaching and research. Supportive of scholarship in the public humanities, he has been a regular contributor to the American Academy of Religion’s public book review site— Reading Religion.

While at UC Davis, Manasvin participated in Intercampus Exchanges with the University of California, Berkeley, and was a student at both the South Asia Summer Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, and the American Institute for Indian Studies’ Language Programs. He is a former fellow at the National Humanities Center, specialising in online pedagogy.

His teaching at UCD included thematic courses on ancient and classical literature, medieval and early modern literature, as well as South Asian literature. He also assisted in courses in Classics, as well as Religious Studies.

Manasvin is a member of the American Comparative Literature Association, the American Academy of Religion, the American Council for Southern Asian Art, and the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies.

Research

South Asia, Early Modern France, Critical Comparative Theory, Translation, Social History, Poetics, Spatiality, Religion, Aesthetics, Politics, Materiality, Performance, Interdisciplinary Research.

Publications and Conferences

“From Trikutam to the World:Local Description and the Geographic Imagination in the Kutrala Kuravanci”, at the Annual Conference on South Asia, UW Madison, October 2024—Panel Organizer of “Knowing Local: Approaches and Perspectives to the Study of South Asia”

“Ephemeral Citation: Landscape, Memory, and Sense-Making in Early Modern Tamil Performance”, at the Annual Conference on South Asia, UW Madison, October 2023—Panel Organizer of “Citing Canons, Contesting Contexts”

“Figurations of Labor in the Global Early Modern”, Presidential Theme Panel at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention, San Francisco, January 2023— Organizer and Moderator

“Walking Towards a Public”, at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention, San Francisco, January 2023— Guaranteed Roundtable Presenter

“The Fortune-teller as Pilgrim: Performing Place and Producing Space in the Tamil Kuravanci”, at the Annual Conference on South Asia, UW Madison, October 2022

“Moliere via Madurai”, at the American Comparative Literature Association, June 2022 — Seminar Chair of “Possibilities in World Literary Criticism(s)”

“Staging Gardens: Anti-Aristotelian Plots in Molière and the Gardens of Versailles”, at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Washington DC, January 2022

Book Reviews:

Review of Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond.” Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion, 29 May, 2025 https://readingreligion.org9781793646279/devotional-fanscapes

“Review of Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims and Untouchables in Eighteenth Century South Asia.” Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion, 26 Oct. 2023, readingreligion.org/9780520390058/merchants-of-virtue.

“Review of Gods in the Time of Democracy.” Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion, 28 Dec. 2021, readingreligion.org/9781478011392/gods-in-the-time-of-democracy.

“Review of Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court.” Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion, 31 Oct. 2020, readingreligion.org/books/culture-encounters.

“Review of Freud’s Mahabharata.” Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion, 5 Sept. 2020, readingreligion.org/books/freuds-mahabharata

Other Media

Bosu, S. and Rajagopalan, M., 2021. Love as Critique. [podcast] High Theory. Available at: <http://hightheory.net/podcast/love-as-critique/> [Accessed 31 March 2021].