Sreyashi Ray


I am a Ph.D. Candidate in South Asian Literature, Culture, and Media with a minor in Comparative Literature 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 global anglophone literature, South Asian vernacular literature and film, postcolonial studies, animal studies, and ecocriticism. My dissertation examines how representations of human-animal relations in literature, film, and mixed-media artwork focused on the postcolonial Indian subcontinent reconfigure the discourses of species, 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 received grants from 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 was recently awarded a Best Graduate Student Essay Prize ( Honorable Mention) by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) for my paper "Insurgent Plants: Reclaiming Postcolonial Indian Forests as Multispecies Commons." 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 Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies,  ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Humanimalia, and Edge Effects.

My preferred pronouns are she/her.