Professor of English Jyotsna Singh, Professor of Renaissance Literature in the Department of English, has been elected Visiting Fellow at Oxford University – St. Catherine’s College. She will be completing this fellowship in the Fall 2019 semester during her sabbatical year.
“I am delighted to be elected Visiting Fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University,” Singh said. “I will be in residence and will be joining the rich intellectual and cultural community of St. Catherine’s College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. I am also excited to spend my tenure time doing research at Oxford’s world-famous Bodleian Libraries, which have a wealth of primary sources for my book in progress.”
“I am excited to spend my tenure time doing research at Oxford’s world-famous Bodleian Libraries, which have a wealth of primary sources for my book in progress.”
As a Visiting Fellow, Singh will work on completing research on her book, Transcultural Islam: Muslim and Christian Identities in Mughal India and Early Modern England, which is an interdisciplinary study that looks at the expanding early modern European (English) world as well as the changing cultural, linguistic, religious, racial, and ethnic coordinates by which Christians defined their identities.
“In Transcultural Islam, I explore the shifting and diverse constructions of Islam within intercultural and intra-cultural contexts, focusing on early modern England and Mughal India from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries,” Singh said.
Singh began working on the book in late 2017/early 2018 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and a very timely Humanities and Arts Research Program (HARP) Development Grant. Early research for this project was supported by a Delia Koo Faculty Research Grant, MSU Asian Studies Center (2017), and a research and travel grant from the MSU Muslim Studies Center (2016).
The book is a culmination of Singh’s earlier, comparative work on Anglo/European-Muslim encounters within global contexts: Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: ‘Discoveries’ of India in the Language of Colonialism and A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion.
“I explore the shifting and diverse constructions of Islam within intercultural and intra-cultural contexts.”
Being named a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University – St. Catherine’s College is validation of Singh’s demonstrated research presence at a national and international level. Her most recent monograph is Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory (Arden, Bloomsbury: 2019).
Singh has received several other research fellowships including at Queen Mary College, University of London and Brown University. She also was invited to design and lead Research Workshops at Newberry Library in Chicago.
Singh teaches and researches early modern literature and culture, with a specialization in Shakespeare, travel writing, postcolonial theory, and early modern gender and race studies at MSU. She often explores the intersections of these different fields and her published work that includes numerous articles and book chapters.
Among her long-term research projects is a book and database on “Iraqi Kurdistan” on which Singh has published two blog essays based on her travels and research of the region through an MSU exchange program that was supported by an IREX grant.
