Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, editor and academic, who is creative director of the Radical Books Collective, founding editor of Warscapes online magazine and is an associate professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Connecticut. Her work "engages questions of decolonization, race, gender and violence through a focus on literary and cultural production from the Global South and their circuits of dissemination". She is the author of Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital (2019), and has been an invited participant and speaker at many educational institutions and literary festivals internationally.
Career
Shringarpure holds a BA degree in literature from Bard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Warscapes, an independent online magazine established in 2011 with a focus on current conflicts across the world, publishing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, interviews, reviews, photo-essays and retrospectives of war literature.
In 2012, she edited Literary Sudans, "intended to highlight the two Sudans as sites of literature and culture", initially an online project before publication as a book by Africa World Press, endorsed by Nuruddin Farah, Salah Hassan and Dinaw Mengestu, among others.
Shringarpure co-founded, with Suchitra Vijayan, the Radical Books Collective, of which she is creative director. The initiative was conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, when she was living in Nairobi, Kenya, as a Fulbright scholar (2019–20), and had to rebuild connections online for her monthly literary salons. Using on the masthead of its website a quotation from Angela Y. Davis – "You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time" – the Radical Books Collective organizes virtual book clubs, author events and seminars on foundational radical books.
Shringarpure held a research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, in August–November 2022, during which period she took part in the Cultural Identity and Memory Studies Institute Seminar Series at the University of St Andrews.
Among publications for which she has written are The Guardian, The Funambulist, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub and Africa is a Country. Shringarpure is Series Editor of Decolonize That! Handbooks for the Revolutionary Overthrow of Embedded Colonial Ideas, published by OR Books (New York).
Bibliography
- Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital, Routledge, 2019, ISBN 9780367670900.
As editor
- Literary Sudans: An Anthology of Literature from Sudan and South Sudan. Introduction by Taban Lo Liyong, translations by Adil Babikir. Africa World Press, 2016, ISBN 9781569024348.
- Imagine Africa, Volume 3, Archipelago Press, 2017.
Selected articles
- "The Digital Savior Complex", Warscapes, 29 May 2015.
- "The rise of the digital saviour: can Facebook likes change the world?", The Guardian, 18 June 2015.
- "Hiding in Plain Sight: Cold War Interventions into African Literature", Johannesburg Review of Books, 15 April 2021,
- "But, first we'll take this W", Africa Is a Country, October 2021.
- "Writing whiteness, writing America", Africa Is a Country, December 2022.
References
- Sawlani, Samira (23 December 2021). "African authors took the literary world by storm in 2021". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- ^ "Dr Bhakti Shringarpure". The University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "Bhakti Shringarpure". Center for the Humanities. City University of New York. 2013. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "The Postcolony Is A Cold War Ruin". Bard College. 1 November 2018. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "Bhakti Shringarpure". African Book Festival. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "Bhakti Shringarpure". The Funambulist. 27 June 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- Nsiah-Buadi, Christabel (23 February 2018). "This feminist author wants to get past 'feminism-lite'". The World. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "About". Warscapes. 26 October 2011. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- Shringarpure, Bhakti (5 December 2012). "Literary Sudans". Africa Is a Country. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- ^ "Shringarpure, Bhakti | LITERARY SUDANS: An Anthology of Literature from Sudan and South Sudan, Edited by Bhakti Shringarpure". Africa World Press. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- Ibeh, Chukwuebuka (27 May 2021). "Radical Books Collective: Virtual Book Club For Radical Readers". Brittle Paper. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "Bhakti Shringarpure: Radical books are a transformative experience". Radical Books Collective. 2 October 2021 – via YouTube.
- ^ "Bhakti Shringarpure". Department of English. University of Connecticut. 30 October 2019. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- Pradhan, Pritika (3 August 2022). "How One Group of Global South Writers is Decolonizing Literature". Literary Hub. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "About". Radical Books Collective. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "Professor Bhakti Shringarpure: 'Reframing African Literary Futures'". University of St Andrews. 26 October 2022. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- "Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital". Routledge. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- Shringarpure, Bhakti (29 May 2015). "The Digital Savior Complex". Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- Shringarpure, Bhakti (18 June 2015). "The rise of the digital saviour: can Facebook likes change the world?". The Guardian.
- Shringarpure, Bhakti (15 April 2021). "Hiding in Plain Sight: Cold War Interventions into African Literature—Bhakti Shringarpure reviews Monica Popescu's At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War". Johannesburg Review of Books. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- Shringarpure, Bhakti (8 October 2021). "But, first we'll take this W". Africa Is a Country. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
- Shringarpure, Bhakti (December 2022). "Writing whiteness, writing America". Africa Is a Country. Retrieved 26 March 2023.