We are excited to announce that Dr. Madhumita Lahiri, Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will be the Tagore Visiting Scholar for 2026.
Dr. Lahiri's research examines the intersections of language ideology, political movements, and aesthetic form in the global twentieth century, shaped by scholarly and personal engagements across South Asia, the United States, southern Africa, and the United Kingdom. She is the author of Imperfect Solidarities: Tagore, Gandhi, Du Bois and the Global Anglophone (Northwestern University Press, 2020), which traces unexpected intellectual and aesthetic connections among Rabindranath Tagore, Mohandas Gandhi, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The book examines how these figures engaged the English language to articulate anti-imperial and anti-racist politics, while also revealing the limits, tensions, and partial failures of global solidarity in the twentieth century. Her current book project titled “How We Hate Now: Xenophobia in the Age of Antiracism,” focuses on sound, speech, and writing across Hindi, Bengali, and English, alongside a sustained interest in southern African literature, cinema, and culture. Dr. Lahiri received her PhD in English and feminist studies from Duke University and her BA from Yale University. More on Dr. Lahiri HERE.
SEMINARS: Solidarity How? 20th Century Internationalism for 21st Century Problems
Noon - 1:30 pm | 10 Stephens Hall
A three-seminar course that looks at Du Bois, Tagore, and Cold War-era politics to trace how ideas of internationalism and cross-border solidarity took shape, and what they can offer today.
Mon, Mar 2: SEMINAR 1: The Global South: W.E.B. Du Bois and India
-
Du Bois, W.E.B. Dark Princess: A Romance (1928). Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
- Lahiri, Madhumita. “The Global South: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Brownies.” from Imperfect Solidarities: Tagore, Gandhi, Du Bois and the Global Anglophone (Northwestern UP, 2020). 111-163
Wed, Mar 4: SEMINAR 2: The Global Anglophone: Rabindranath Tagore and Asia
- Tagore, Rabindranath. Gitanjali: Song Offerings. 1912.
- Okakura, Kakuzo (Tenshin). The Ideals of the East. 1903.
- Lahiri, Madhumita. “The Global Anglophone: Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali” from Imperfect Solidarities: Tagore, Gandhi, Du Bois and the Global Anglophone (Northwestern UP, 2020). 21-64.
Fri, Mar 6: SEMINAR 3: Cold War Woes
- Kalliney, Peter. “Cultural Diplomacy, the Political Police, and Nonalignment” and “A Brief Intellectual History of the Aesthetic Cold War” from The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature. Princeton University Press, 2022. 3-48
-
Getachew, Adom. “Introduction: Worldmaking After Empire.” From Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. 1-13.
-
Tagore, Rabindranath. “Kabuliwala.” 1892 (From Selected Short Stories Translated with an Introduction by William Radice, 129-137)
TAGORE PROGRAM VISITING SCHOLAR LECTURE: Of Migrants and Murderers: Reading Tagore in Xenophobic Times
Fri, Mar 6, 2026 | 5 - 6:30 pm | 10 Stephens Hall
Abstract:
From North America to South Asia, from Scandinavia to South Africa, we are living in a moment of pervasive and often violent xenophobia. I use this unfortunate contemporary predicament to revisit Rabindranath Tagore’s 1892 story “Kabuliwala” (roughly, “the one from Kabul”). Often remembered for its affective and sentimental power, “Kabuliwala” nonetheless includes moments of genuine fear and unabashed xenophobia. I trace its extraordinary influence and persistence for more than a century to argue that Tagore established a powerful narrative framework for transnational migration, one that continues to reverberate today. While “Kabuliwala” was written in Bengali for a Bengali readership, decades before his wider Anglophone success, the narrative mechanisms of Tagore’s story persist in contemporary stories of migrants and locals in Bengal. I touch briefly on the story’s many adaptations, including the 2018 film Bioscopewala, and I conclude by showing how a novel that recently featured in Oprah’s Book Club, Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief (2025), might also be understood as yet another adaptation of “Kabuliwala.”
The three sessions (on Mar 2, 4, & 6) are closed to the public however the Tagore Program Visiting Scholar Lecture on Fri, Mar 6, 2026, from 5-6:30 pm PST is open to all.
BASICS
- Dates: Mar 2-6, 2025
- Location: 10 Stephens Hall
- Application Deadline: February 20, 2026
- Participants: Graduate and advanced undergraduate students
- Priority will be given to UC Berkeley students. Limited seats available.
- The course is free for participants.
- The final lecture is free and open to the public.
- CFP
EXPECTATIONS & PROGRAM DETAILS
- This program will be an intensive dive into Rabindranath Tagore Studies. In order to foster a rich, engaging, accessible program, participants will be expected to attend all sessions, complete all program readings in a timely manner, and actively participate in the discussions.
Click HERE to apply
The Spring Institute has been made possible in part by a major gift by Drs. Maya and Sakti Das.