Thesis Title: Lassitude and Languor in Contemporary World Literature
Supervisor: Professor Ankhi Mukherjee
Research Interests: Postcolonial literature and culture; world literature; modern and contemporary literature; psychoanalysis; ontology, phenomenology, and theories of subjectivity.
Thesis Summary: My DPhil examines the political, aesthetic, and metaphysical significance of "doing nothing" in contemporary world literature. Focusing on fiction by Ottessa Moshfegh, Halle Butler, Gina Apostol, Jeet Thayil, and Ling Ma, it asks how inertia and disengagement unsettle dominant ideas of productivity, subjectivity, community, and world-making. I suggest that these novels transform inaction from the mere absence or failure of action into a distinct formal and conceptual mode, using suspension and inertia to reimagine both political possibility and the temporal and ontological structures of the novel.
