Research & Writing

I research and write in the following areas:

  • postcolonial digital humanities with specific interests in Internet infrastructures, postcolonial computing, feminist digital activisms in the Global South. My work is primarily located in the Indian Ocean region.
  • digital humanities in the Indian context, focusing on archives, decolonial digital pedagogy, and DH curriculum development
  • post-9/11 literary, cultural, and digital texts about Muslims in America, including the racialization of Muslims, political and cultural practices of minority citizenship, hashtag activism, and race and trauma

I was invited to speak on the “Reframing History” podcast by Dr. Julian Chambliss (June 2020) to discuss my work in postcolonial digital humanities. My work has been featured in KU News and in the KU Libraries Annual Review.

Book Projects In Progress

  • Monograph: “Infracolonialism: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Internet Infrastructure ” (manuscript in preparation). Grounded in science & technology studies and digital humanities, my book uncovers the colonial genealogies undergirding the very infrastructure of the Internet in the Global South, and the development projects by corporations like Facebook and Google intended to remedy the global digital divide. Drawing on sources ranging from colonial maps to data policies in postcolonial nation-states, I trace how Internet infrastructures remain invested in notions of Western modernity, promising technological solutions to political, cultural, and economic problems. This rhetoric of technomodernity draws on colonial-racial views of postcolonial natives as premodern subjects in need of Western aid supplied by white technologists. Given the importance of Internet infrastructures in the world today, my work thus argues for decolonizing infrastructural development and in particular, highlights new modes of regional co-building, ownership, and management of Internet infrastructures in the Global South. Browse visuals
  • Textbook (Editor) : “Introduction to Digital Humanities” (manuscript in preparation)

Published Work

(Some of my published work can be downloaded below. If you happen to teach my work in class, or use it in your research, please do drop me a note at dt1349@msstate.edu!)

Digital & Public Humanities Projects

  • Mississippi Zine Fest (2023)
    This website showcases zines created for the annual Mississippi Zine Fest organized by Dr. Thorat’s Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literature class. The Mississippi Zine Fest highlights zines on Mississippi related topics or produced by zine creators located in Mississippi. The first event was held in 2019 and it has scaled up since then as a public humanities and community based event. The Starkville Public Library hosted the showcase in 2022, and the Starkville Area Arts Council hosted a public reception for the Mississippi Zine Fest in 2023. Project Website: https://mississippizinefest.com/
  • Ants Among Elephants Digital Project (2023)
    Published in 2017, Ants Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla overlaps family stories and national history to narrate the lived realities of caste-based oppression in postcolonial India. This digital project provides timelines, character biographies, key political terms, and thematic essays to help readers explore the book further. This project was created collaboratively by a graduate postcolonial studies class at Mississippi State University. Project Website: https://antsamongelephants.wordpress.com/
  • Afterlives of 9/11 (2021)
    Sept 2021 marked 20 years since the 9/11 attacks. This project traces the echoing reverberations of 9/11 and its multiple invocations, meanings and traumas in these last 20 years. Drawing on post-9/11 literature, films, comedy, music, speeches, digital media and other cultural productions, this project focuses particularly on the experiences of Muslim and Arab communities in America and in the vast geopolitical areas drawn into the War on Terror. This project is grounded in the exhortation by Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian American poet, to “affirm life, affirm life…affirm life.” Project Website: https://afterlivesof911.wordpress.com/
  • Yuri Kochiyama Digital Project (2020)
    Yuri Kochiyama was a Japanese American activist who dedicated her life to fighting white supremacy in all its forms. Her activist philosophy was transnational, anti-colonial, and connected Black and Asian American struggles against racism. The Yuri Kochiyama Digital Project focuses on her memoir, Passing It On, and offers short essays and an interactive map highlighting and celebrating Yuri Kochiyama’s activist legacy. This project was collaboratively created by the Women and Literature class at Mississippi State University in 2021 with assistance from Sam Dean, graduate research assistant. Project Website: https://yurikochiyamaproject.wordpress.com/
  • Indian Indenture in Trinidad (2013)
    This digital project uses WordPress and Timemapper to map, spatially and chronologically, the migration of Indian indentured workers to Trinidad between 1845 and 1917. By visualizing the pattern of migration flow, the project situates migration under the indenture system at the nexus of the policies and ideology of the British metropole, the sugar plantocracy in Trinidad, and Indian nationalism. Project Website: www.indianindenture.wordpress.com