Dr. Bakirathi Mani

Biography

Bakirathi Mani is the Penn Presidential Compact Professor in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania and serves as the Faculty Director of the Asian American Studies Program. Her research interests encompass Asian American Studies, South Asian Studies, visual cultural studies, museum curatorial studies, postcolonial theory, and transnational feminist queer color theory. She has made significant contributions to the fields of comparative race and ethnic studies. Mani is a core faculty member in the Asian American Studies Program and participates in the Gender, Sexuality, Women's Studies Program as well as the Graduate Group in Cinema and Media Studies, History of Art, and South Asian Studies. Her book, 'Unseeing Empire: Photography, Representation, and South Asian America' published by Duke University Press in 2020, received an Honorable Mention for the Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies in 2022. Her scholarly work explores the complexities of photographic representation and racial self-representation among South Asians in America. Additionally, Mani has authored essays and articles published in numerous academic journals, examining the intersection of photography and anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a longstanding career in academia, she previously taught at Swarthmore College before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, where she continues to engage in curatorial practices and collaborative projects within the arts.

Research Interests

Experience

Courses