Sreyashi Ray


I am a PhD Candidate in South Asian Literatures, Cultures, and Media (major) and Comparative Literature (minor) in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) at the University of Minnesota. I am also an Environmental Humanities Graduate Fellow at the University of Minnesota's Environmental Humanities Initiative. I specialize in 20th and 21st century South Asian literature and cinema, animal studies, ecocriticism, and postcolonial studies. My dissertation examines how representations of human-animal relations in literature, cinema, and mixed-media artwork focused on the Indian subcontinent reconfigure the discourses of race, caste, religion, sexuality, and labor. My research and teaching are complemented by my creative outreach activities as a self-taught illustration artist specializing in multispecies studies. 

My dissertation research has been supported by the University of Minnesota’s Environmental Humanities Initiative Graduate Fellowship, Rose Travel Fellowship for Creative Research in Asia, Graduate Research Partnership Program Fellowship, and AMES Graduate Fellowship. I have been awarded teaching excellence certificates for dedication to student learning by the University of Minnesota's Center for Educational Innovation. My research has been published in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment and Humanimalia. 

My prefered pronouns are she/her.