Faculty Profile

B.A., California (Berkeley); M.A., Ph.D., Columbia

Professor Perera's research interests include postcolonial discourse studies, working-class literature, South Asian literature, feminist theory, and economic globalization.  Her dissertation, "'-All that is present and moving. . .': Thinking Working-Class Writing at the Limits," focused upon traditions working-class writing and literary radicalism from the global South including South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and attempted to examine race and class politics in the context of the changing terms of the international division of labor.  She is currently working on revising this manuscript for publication.  She has also written on the history of linguistic nationalism in post-colonial Sri Lanka.  Professor Perera is currently part of the editorial collective of Nivedini, a feminist journal published in English, Tamil, and Sinhala by the Women's Education and Research Center in Colombo.

Principles of Literary Study

Twentieth-Century Literature in a Global Context

Gender and Genre

Feminist Theory in Literary Study

Postcolonial Texts and the Critique of Historicism