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Literature & the Arts
Assistant Professor of Literature
PhD, University of Chicago
Joya John has earned a PhD, from the University of Chicago. She is passionate about how literary and cultural studies can respond to new challenges in the Indian subcontinent and more globally. Her research has so far focused on issues of environment and ecology in Indian fiction. She is interested in issues of energy, mining, waste, as well as the changing landscape of activism around environmental issues and climate change. She believes that literature can bring valuable insights to environmental issues that are often dominated by scientific and policy approaches. She holds both master’s and MPhil degrees in English Literary Studies from Delhi University.
Joya has over six years teaching experience at Delhi University where she taught courses on Indian writing in translation, Realism and the Novel, and European drama. During graduate school in the United States, she has taught academic and professional writing and courses on environmental issues and globalization in South Asia. When not teaching or researching, she is interested in stand-up comedy and believes irony, satire and comedy have tremendous critical power in contemporary India. She is interested in developing audio content and believes podcasts are the future.
Her research interests include Environmental humanities, Hindi and South Asian literary studies, Comparative literature, and postcolonial studies. She is currently working on academic articles on issues of energy security and access in Hindi fiction and the depiction of Adivasi communities and the environment in contemporary novels set in Jharkhand. She has presented her work at the Association for Asian Studies, European Conference of South Asian Studies, the Annual South Asia Conference at Madison, and the American Comparative Literature Association. She has published on issues of sexual harassment at the workplace, Dalit drama, and autoethnography in contemporary Dalit thought.
“Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: The Vishakha Guidelines, Implementation and After” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and Pacific, 22, (Oct) 2009 https://tinyurl.com/ybw6qnvm
“Articulation of Dalit Selfhood in the plays of Datta Bhagat”, Muse India, 21 (Sept-October) 2008 www.museindia.com. https://tinyurl.com/y9s9dlx7
“Who needs Autobiography: A critique of Kancha Ilaiah’s Why I am not a Hindu” Creative Forum:Journal of Literary and Critical Writings, 20, No. 2, (Jul–Dec) 2009: 120–125.
“Adivasi Indigeneity: Writing an Indigenous Subject in Ranendra’s Global gaon ke devta, South Asian Review (under peer review) 2021