Mita Choudhury

Candidate statement

Mita Choudhury is Professor of English at Purdue University Northwest. Her latest book, Nation-Space in Enlightenment Britain: An Archaeology of Empire (Routledge, 2019), describes the spatial dimension of British identity and proposes a critical vocabulary for studying public and private space through the lens of nation. This monograph builds upon her research over the last twenty-five years on the mixed legacy of Enlightenment globalism, modern systems of mediation, and the imperial imaginary in literary production. She is author of Interculturalism and Resistance in the London Theatre, 1660-1800: Performance, Identity, Empire and co-editor (with Laura Rosenthal) of Monstrous Dreams of Reason: Body, Self, and Other in the Enlightenment. Currently she serves as the co-chair of the ASECS Theater and Performance Studies Caucus. As guest editor of the South Atlantic Review (Spring 2001), she opined about the paradox of “Being Global” and described such expressions of xenophobia as seen in neo-Nazi resurgence in Europe. Indeed, the Fourth Industrial Revolution echoes many features of its First predecessor. The devaluation of the humanities, however, is plus ça change only in the absence of resistance to reactionary forces. The challenges of 2020 have made it abundantly clear that institutions must revamp curriculum and retool its resources both human and technological—and, in this endeavor, the role of eighteenth-century studies as sole authority on “foundations” remains critical. Based upon this premise of urgent relevance and using the lens of the Anthropocene, Choudhury argues in a forthcoming article (to be published in 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era) that art, architecture, and cultural productions of the Enlightenment reveal progress but also embed the systemic flaws which still divide and destabilize. Space and location, trade and empire, migrancy and globalization provide the backdrop for Mita Choudhury’s work on the cultural productions of the British Enlightenment.