Dr. Debarati Sanyal

Biography

Debarati Sanyal is a Professor of French and the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds the Zaffaroni Family Chair in Undergraduate Education and serves as the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor for the 2025-2026 academic year. Her teaching and research interests encompass 19th-21st century French Francophone literature, memory studies, aesthetics, bio/necropolitics, critical human rights, and refugee studies. Professor Sanyal has received numerous awards for her excellence in teaching, including the prestigious UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award in 2012, and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year. She is currently co-principal investigator for a Mellon grant titled 'Counter-Imaginary Authoritarian' (2024-2027). Her notable published works include 'Arts Border: Fugitive Bodies of Europe's Edges' (Fordham, 2025) and 'Violence Modernity: Baudelaire, Irony Politics Form' (Johns Hopkins, 2006). She has also guest-edited a special issue of 'Critical Times' and has co-edited several volumes addressing contemporary issues in critical theory. Sanyal is an active contributor to scholarly discussions through her publications and has written extensively on themes of race, migration, and humanitarian issues in relation to contemporary society.

Research Interests