Professor Suman Gupta

Chair in Literature and Cultural History

Suman Gupta was educated at the Universities of Delhi and Oxford. He teaches modern and contemporary literature, and has held appointments at Nottingham University and the University of Surrey Roehampton before joining the Open University in 2000.

He was the production course team chair and is the presentation deputy course team chair for A300: Twentieth Century Literature: Contexts and Debates; and was production deputy course team chair for the English MA programme, A815 and A816. He has written material for several other modules.

As Principal Coordinator of the Globalization, Identity Politics and Social Conflict (GIPSC) Project, he has collaborated with colleagues and organised workshops in India, Nigeria, China, Morocco, Iran, Bulgaria and the UK. From 2006 to 2008 he was Joint Director of the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies of the Open University Arts Faculty, and coordinated projects on contemporary Indian English publishing and the Nigerian moving picture industry. . He has also coordinated a project, 2007-2010, on English Studies in Bulgarian and Romanian Higher Education, in collaboration with colleagues from three Bulgarian and four Romanian universities. Currently, with Professor Richard Allen he is overseeing a project on Prospects for English Studies: India and Britain Compared, 2011-2013, which involves working closely with colleagues from three universities in Delhi.

Suman Gupta’s research interests are divided between modern and contemporary literature in English, cultural studies and political philosophy.

Fellowships/ Scholarships:

UGC Junior Research Fellow, Delhi (1989-1990); Rhodes Scholar, Oxford (1990-1993); Knopf Fellow, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin TX (2000); Leverhulme Fellow (2001); Charter Fellow, Wolfson College Oxford (2001-2002); Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Roehampton University (2002-2011, 2011-2014); Visiting Professorial Fellow, Institute of World Literature, Beijing University (2007-2010); Visiting Fellow, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge (2011); Visiting Professor, Institute of Language and Literature, The State University of Campinas, Brazil (2012).

Main Publications

Single-authored Books:

1. Two Texts and I: Disciplines of Knowledge and the Literary Subject (Madison NJ and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses, 1999).
   [An examination of the relationship between disciplines of knowledge and textual stylistics.]
   
   
2. V.S.Naipaul: Writers and Their Work (Plymouth: Northcote House and British Council, 1999).
   [A critical introduction to all Naipaul’s published works till 1999, with a particular emphasis their political underpinnings.]
   
   
3. Marxism, History, and Intellectuals: Toward a Reconceptualized Transformative Socialism (Madison NJ and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses, 2000).
   [ Traces the development of constructions of "intellectuals" in socialist political philosophy, and offers a modest proposal for future socialist transformation.]
   
   
4. Corporate Capitalism and Political Philosophy (London and Sterling VA: Pluto, 2002).
   [A study of the place of managerialism in contemporary corporate capitalist organization, and its evasive philosophical underpinnings.]
   
   
5. The Replication of Violence: Thoughts on International Terrorism After 11 September 2001 (London and Sterling VA: Pluto, 2002).
   [A close analysis of British and US media reportage on “international terrorism” in the three months after 11 September 2001.]
   
   
6. Re-Reading Harry Potter (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003).
   [A study of mass market literature, with the Harry Potter books and films, and the so-called Harry Potter “phenomenon”, as a case study.]
   
   Re-Reading Harry Potter: Second Edition (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009) [With four additional chapters, covering a world-to-text approach, reception in Bulgaria and China, and fanfiction.]
   
   
7. The Theory and Reality of Democracy: A Case Study in Iraq (London and New York: Continuum, 2006).
   [Examines concepts of democracy in the international/transnational domain from a politically realist perspective, and makes a case study of the rhetoric and policies surrounding the invasion and occupation of Iraq (September 2002-June 2004).]
   
   
8. Social Constructionist Identity Politics and Literary Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007).
   [A critique of social constructionist identity politics, and an examination of the institutionalization of identity politics in literary studies.]
   
   
9. Globalization and Literature (Cambridge: Polity, 2009) [Presents an overview of the relationship between globalization studies and literature and literary studies, and the bearing that they have on each other. It is argued that, while literature has registered globalization processes in relevant ways, there has been a missed articulation between globalization studies and literary studies.]
   
   
10. Imagining Iraq: English literature and the Invasion of Iraq (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011)
    [An enormous number of literary texts engaged with the build-up towards, undertaking of and aftermath of the recent invasion of Iraq. This book both provides a survey of such texts and presents a particular critical perspective on them. Many were regarded as taking a position for or against the invasion, but this study neither attempts to hold authors to account for their political choices nor tries to reach a moral consensus on the invasion. The idea here is to examine how certain literary texts appeared within and 'spoke' to a specific socio-political context, not merely to reckon with that context but to understand the condition of contemporary literature generally.]
11. Contemporary Literature: The Basics (London: Routledge, 2012).
    [‘Contemporary Literature’ is among the most popular areas of literary study but it can be a difficult one to define. This book equips readers with the necessary tools to take an analytical and systematic approach to contemporary texts. ]
    

Edited Books:

1. With Tapan Basu and Subarno Chattarji, India in the Age of Globalization (New Delhi: NMML, 2003), pp.416.
   
   
2. With Duro Oni, Tope Omoniyi, Efurosibina Adegbija and Segun Awonusi, Nigeria in the Age of Globalization (Lagos: CBAAC, 2004), pp.516.
   
   
3. With Richard Brown, Aestheticism and Modernism: Debating Twentieth Century Literature (London: Routledge, 2005), 432pp.
   
   
4. With David Johnson, A Twentieth Century Literature Reader: Texts and Debates (London: Routledge, 2005), 296pp.
   
   
5. With Tope Omoniyi, The Cultures of Economic Migration: International Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp.350.
   
   
6. With Tapan Basu and Subarno Chattarji. Globalization in India: Contents and Discontents (New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2009).
   
   
7. With Milena Katsarska. English Studies On This Side: Post-2007 Reckonings (Plovdiv: University of Plovdiv Press, 2010).
   
   

Guest Edited Journal Issues

1. Wasafiri, Special China Issue (London: Routledge, 2008), Issue 55
2. (With Ana-Karina Schneider) Special Issue: English Studies in Romania, The American, British and Canadian Studies Journal  (Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, University of Sibiu), Volume 14, June 2010.

Over 60 papers, chapters in books, reviews.

See also Open Research Online for further details of Suman Gupta’s research publications.