Shwetha’s first book project, Unpleasant Genres: Affect, Conflict, and Resistance in Postcolonial South Asia, revitalizes the intersections between postcolonial studies, affect studies, genre studies, and gender and sexuality studies to reimagine agitation, envy, vengeance, exhaustion, melancholia, mourning, and pessimism in the context of neoliberal capitalism, liberal humanitarianism, majoritarian nationalisms, and unsustainable developmentalism in South Asia and its diasporas in Canada, England, and the United States. Through a comparative study of novels, films, and media, she puts forth unpleasantness as a dynamic politico-affective concept and argue that contemporary texts on South Asian pasts and presents mobilize the ambiguities and contingencies of unpleasantness and locate it in the domain of the ordinary to reveal the continuum between everyday and extraordinary violence.

Her second book project, tentatively titled, English Affects: Aliteracy, Visuality, and Aurality in South Asia, departs from the colonial and neoliberal paradigms of mastery, proficiency, and authenticity and undertakes a comparative study of English, Hindi, Urdu, and Tamil literatures and films, documentraies, songs, political speeches, and radio broadcasts to interpret the affective and aesthetic dynamics of the English language in the longue durée of South Asia.

Shwetha’s research has been supported by: UMass’ World Studies Interdisciplinary Project-Decolonial Global Studies Mellon Summer Dissertation Fellowship, Research Enhancement and Leadership Fellowship, College of Humanities and Fine Arts Summer Dissertation Fellowship, Interdisciplinary Studies Institute Fellowship.