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Dorothy Figueira

Dorothy Figueira
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Distinguished Research Professor

Dorothy Figueira holds graduate degrees in the history of religion and theology from Paris and Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Comparative Literature. Her scholarly interests include religion and literature, translation theory, exoticism, myth theory, and travel narratives. She is the author of Translating the Orient (1991), The Exotic: A Decadent Quest (1994), Aryans, Jews and Brahmins (2002), and Otherwise Occupied: Theories and Pedagogies of Alterity (2008). She edited of La Production de l'Autre (1999), Cybernetic Ghosts (2004) and co-edited (with Marc Maufort) Theatres in the Round: Multi-Ethnic, Indigenous, and Intertextual Dialogues in Drama (2011). 

She has served as the Editor of The Comparatist (2008-2011) and is currently editor of Recherche litteraire/Literary Research. She has written numerous scholarly articles and presented many academic papers. She is an Honorary President of the International Comparative Literature Association, and has served in the past on the boards of the American Comparative Literature Association and the Southern Comparative Literature Association. She has held fellowships from the American Institute for Indian Studies, Fulbright Foundation, and the NEH. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University Lille (France), Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India), and the Indira Gandhi Open University in New Delhi. 

Research Interests:

Religion and literature, translation theory, exoticism, myth theory, and travel narratives

Selected Publications:

“Merchants, Missionaries and Miscegenation” Komparatistik als Humanwissenschaft.  Eds. Monika Schmitz-Emans, Claudia Schmitt and Christian Winterhaller, Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2008.

“Are You the Puerto Rican Girl Who Wants to Study Sanskrit? Race, Affirmative Action and the Study of the Other” Recherche littéraire/Literary Research 24 (2008):5-26

“What Would the Mahatma Do? The Fate of Indian Vernacular Literature in the Global Age” Hindi Discourse 1 (1) 2008: 9-24.

“La guerre civile et l’enjeu du multiculturalisme” In L’Homme. Revue Française d’Anthropologie Sociale du Collège de France 187-88/ 2008: 1-13.

Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority SUNY Press, 2002

Otherwise Occupied: Theories and Pedagogies of Alterity SUNY Press, 2008

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