Center for the Study of the Early Modern World

Goutam Piduri is a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of English and holds a B.A. in English from Ashoka University. He is interested in nonacquisitive forms of imperialist thought and style in the 17th and 20th centuries. His dissertation project inquires into the mechanisms by which nonpossession — a cultivated indifference to material goods — is allied to imperialist thought. To this end, he reads the work of English poets, East India Company ethnographers, and Indian spiritual authorities to excavate a counter-intuitive relationship between nonpossession and empire. He has attended seminars convened by the Folger Shakespeare Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He translates from Telugu, with translations appearing in Asymptote and Denver Quarterly.

While a fellow at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities Goutam will be working on the project “Owning Renunciation: Studies in the Authority of Non-possession.”