Staff Profile

M.Phil. (Oxford)

Laurea in Lettere (Università di Roma "La Sapienza")

Research Interests

I am interested in the cultural history of Italian imperialism, South Asian literature, anticolonial and liberationist writing (I have worked on Antonio Gramsci and Frantz Fanon in particular), and postcolonial print cultures. 

You can listen to an interview with me about my work here

Here you can watch the lecture I gave at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, New York University, in April 2018, on my book, Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930-1970.  

In October 2020, I held a conversation with Maaza Mengiste, the author of The Shadow King (2019), shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This amazing novel narrates the Ethiopian resistance to Italian imperialism in the 1930s, and the role of female warriors. The event was hosted by the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts. 

Current Projects

I am currently working on a project entitled "Unbinding Empire: Ethiopia in Global Print Cultures". The project aims to produce a global account of Ethiopia in the period between the two wars with a specific focus on the Italian invasion of 1935. It examines the rich production of Italian, British, Ethiopian, Caribbean, and African American literature and print culture around the invasion. It builds on recent scholarship examining the flow of progressive and radical ideas from the colonies to the metropole, seeking to connect recent anti-racist protests sparked by the COVID-19 crisis to earlier moments of black political activism through a focus on the textual construction of resistance. It focuses on the responses of colonial subjects (Ethiopian, Jamaican, West African) and the ways in which they reconfigure the definition of Britishness, linking them to the work of European antifascist intellectuals and contrasting them with Italian colonial and fascist literature. The dialogues that take place among political activists via the rich material of print culture yield a nuanced portrayal of the connections binding Ethiopia and its supporters/detractors together, beyond the colonizer/colonized binary.  

Postgraduate Supervision

I welcome PhD and MLitt. proposals on the following: world literature in English, South Asian literature in English and in translation, Italy and postcoloniality, Antonio Gramsci and the postcolonial world, Third-Worldism and its impact on the literary sphere. 

I am currently supervising two PhD projects:

Rebecca Latcham-Ford, "Travelling to Italy: Italy in the Anglophone Postcolonial Imagination"

Tijana Mamula, "Adaptation as Theory"

International Recognition 

I have held visiting scholarships at Brown University and at New York University. 

I am Associate Editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, and I sit on the editorial board of From the European South. 

I have delivered invited talks and book presentations at New York University, Stony Brook University (US), Concordia University (Canada), University College Cork (Ireland), the University of Venice, the University of Genoa, the University of Udine, Villa Romana (Florence, Italy), King’s College London, SOAS, and the University of Cambridge.

External Funding

Leverhulme Visiting Professorship for Stephanie Newell, Yale University, to visit Newcastle University for one year (2019-20). Value of award: £146,813. 

Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, "Decolonizing Europe: Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire", 2012-2013. Value of award: £41,000.  

Principal Investigator: international research network funded by Leverhulme Trust, on "Postcolonial Translation: The Case of South Asia". Value of award: £65,072. Length of project: 2008-2011.

Undergraduate Teaching

Fictions of Migration, Stage 2 module

Writing the Postcolonial Nation: Literature from the Indian Subcontinent, Stage 3 module

• Gajarawala T, Srivastava N, Sunder Rajan R, Webb J, ed. A Handbook of Postcolonial Print Cultures. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. In Preparation.
• Srivastava N. "Philological Method and Subaltern Pasts". Italian Culture 2021. Submitted.
• Srivastava N. “Sylvia Pankhurst in 1919: Feminism, Communism, and Interwar Internationalism”. In: Matt Perry, ed. The Global Challenge of Peace: 1919 as a Contested Threshold to a New World Order. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021. In Press.
• Srivastava N. “The Intellectual as Partisan: Sylvia Pankhurst and the Italian Invasion of Ethiopia”. Postcolonial Studies 2021, 24(4), 448-463.
• Srivastava N. Being Filthy Poor in Rising Asia: Precarity, Globalization, and the Evolution of Indian Literature. In: Om Dwivedi and Dieter Riemenschneider, ed. Representations of Precarity in South Asia. London: Bloomsbury, 2021. In Press.
• Orsini F, Srivastava N, Zecchini L, ed. The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form: Print Cultures Between Decolonization and the Cold War. Open Book Publishers, 2021. In Press.
• Srivastava N. Publishing the Resistance: Third-Worldist Writing in Cold War Italy. In: Francesca Orsini, Neelam Srivastava, and Laetitia Zecchini, ed. The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form: Cold War, Decolonization and Third World Print Cultures. Cambridge UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022, pp.137-176.
• Srivastava N. “A Suitable Boy: India’s Turbulent Past and the Literature That Emerged from Partition”. London: Penguin Random House, 2020. Available at: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/august/a-suitable-boy-vikram-seth-partition-literature.html.
• Srivastava N. “The Black Jacobins e l’invasione italiana dell’Etiopia”. ÀCOMA: Rivista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani 2020, (18), 106-110.
• Srivastava N. Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930-1970 . London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Ciocca R, Srivastava N, ed. Indian Literature and the World: Multilingualism, Translation and the Public Sphere. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
• Srivastava N. A Multiple Addressivity: Indian Subaltern Autobiographies and the Role of Translation. In: Rossella Ciocca and Neelam Srivastava, ed. Indian Literature and the World: Multilingualism, Translation and the Public Sphere. London, UK: Palgrace, 2017, pp.105-134.
• Srivastava N. Translating Resistance: Fanon and Radical Italy, 1960-1970. In: Kathryn Batchelor and Sue-Ann Harding, ed. Translation and Liberation: Frantz Fanon Across Continents and Languages. London, UK: Routledge, 2017.
• Srivastava N. Minor Literature and the South Asian Short Story. In: Alex Tickell, ed. South-Asian Fiction in English: Contemporary Transformations. London, UK: Palgrave, 2016, pp.253-271.
• Srivastava N. Le Fanon italien: révélation d’une histoire éditoriale enfouie. In: Jean Khalfa and Robert Young, ed. Frantz Fanon, Écrits sur l’aliénation et la liberté, Oeuvres II. Paris, France: La Découverte, 2015, pp.565-583.
• Srivastava N. Frantz Fanon in Italy: Or, Historicizing Fanon. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 2015, 17(3), 309-328.
• McLaughlan R, Srivastava N. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory. Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 2014, 22(1), 240-270.
• Bhattacharya B, Srivastava N. Who Owns Gramsci? Response to Timothy Brennan. Postcolonial Studies 2013, 16(1), 79-86.
• Srivastava N. Riots and Realism: The Secularization of Urban Space in Fiction by Rudyard Kipling and Vikram Seth. Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings 2013, 13(2).
• Orsini F, Srivastava N. Translation and the Postcolonial: Multiple Geographies, Multi-Lingual Contexts. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 2013, 15(3), 323-331.
• Srivastava N, Bhattacharya B, ed. The Postcolonial Gramsci. New York and London: Routledge, 2012.
• Srivastava N. Reading after Terror: The Reluctant Fundamentalist and First-World Allegory. In: Benwell, B., Procter, J., Robinson, G, ed. Postcolonial Audiences: Readers, Viewers, and Reception. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012, pp.171-183.
• Srivastava N. Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel: National and Cosmopolitan Narratives in English. London: Routledge, 2007.
• Srivastava N. Reading Fury as an Imperial Fiction. In: Ghosh, R, ed. Romancing Theory, Riding Interpretation: (In)fusion Approach, Salman Rushdie. New York: Peter Lang, 2012, pp.199-212.
• Srivastava N. Anthologizing the Nation: Literature Anthologies and the Idea of India. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 2010, 46(2), 151-163.
• Srivastava N. Towards a Critique of Colonial Violence: Fanon, Gandhi and the Restoration of Agency. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 2010, 46(3-4), 303-319.
• Srivastava N, O'Leary A. "Violence and the Wretched: The Cinema of Gillo Pontecorvo". The Italianist 2009, 29(2), 249-264.
• Srivastava N. Bollywood as National(ist) Cinema: Violence, Patriotism and the National-Popular in Rang de Basanti. Third Text 2009, 23(6), 703-716.
• Srivastava N. "Postcolonial Translation: The Case of South Asia". Anglistica: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2008, 12(2), 63-75.
• Srivastava N. Decolonizing the Self: Gandhian Non-Violence and Fanonian Violence as Comparative “Ethics of Resistance” in Kanthapura and The Battle of Algiers. In: Shackleton, M, ed. Diasporic Theory and Literature: Where Now?. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008, pp.86-103.
• Srivastava, N. “Pidgin English or Pigeon Indian?” Babus and Babuisms in colonial and postcolonial fiction. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 2007, 43(1), 55-64.
• Srivastava N. Anti-colonialism and the Italian Left: Resistances to the Fascist Invasion of Ethiopia. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 2006, 8(3), 413-429.
• Srivastava N, De Donno F. Colonial and postcolonial Italy. Interventions 2006, 8(3), 371-379.
• Srivastava N. Anti-colonial violence and the 'dictatorship of the truth' in the films of Gillo Pontecorvo, an interview. Interventions 2005, 7(1), 97-106.
• Srivastava N. Interview with the Italian Film Director Gillo Pontecorvo. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 2005, 7(1), 106-117.
• Srivastava N. Languages of the nation in Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' and Vikram Seth's A 'Suitable Boy'. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 2005, 36(1-2), 207-231.
• Srivastava N. Secularism in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. In: GJV Prasad, ed. Vikram Seth: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2004, pp.87-106.
• Srivastava N. Fictions of Nationhood in Amitav Ghosh's 'The Shadow Lines'. In: Bose, B, ed. Amitav Ghosh: Critical Perspectives. New Delhi, India: Pencraft International, 2003.
• Srivastava N. "The Invention of India in Vikram Seth's 'A Suitable Boy'. International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter 2003, (32), 21.
• Srivastava N. "The Multi-Lingual Context of Indian Fiction in English". Anglistica, special issue on Texts in Transit 2001, 5(1), 105-123.
• Srivastava N. Amitav Ghosh’s Ethnographic Fictions: Intertextual Links between In An Antique Land and His Doctoral Thesis. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 2001, 36(2), 45-64.
• Srivastava N. Antonio Gramsci and Anti-Colonial Internationalism. In: Adriano Habed and Sandra Ponzanesi, ed. Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe: Critics, Artists, Movements, and their Publics. London, UK: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2018, pp.3-19.