S. Shankar is a critic, novelist, and translator. His scholarly areas of interest are postcolonial literature (especially of Africa and South Asia), literature of immigration, film, creative writing and translation studies. He is Professor of English and a former Chair of the English Department, and editor of the literary journal Mānoa, based in the department.
His critical volume The Cost of Living: Poverty Abolition and Cultural Fictions of the Poor is forthcoming from Duke University Press (2027). His most recent novel is Ghost in the Tamarind (U of Hawaii Press 2017). An Italian translation of Ghost in the Tamarind was published in 2021. His other books include the co-edited anthology Caste and Life Narratives (special issue of Biography 2017 and Primus Books India 2019); the work of criticism Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation, and the Vernacular (U. of California P.; OrientBlackswan India), published in 2012; the novels No End to the Journey, published by Steerforth Press in 2005, and A Map of Where I Live, published by Heinemann in 1998. A Spanish translation of No End to the Journey appeared in 2009; a first volume of criticism, entitled Textual Traffic: Colonialism, Modernity, and the Economy of the Text (SUNY Press, 2002); the co-edited anthology Crossing into America: The New Literature of Immigration (New Press, 2003); and I as Man, a collection of poems (Writer's Workshop, 1987).
Shankar is a translator from Tamil, including of the full-length Tamil play Water! by Komal Swaminathan, published in 2001 in India by Seagull Press and in the US by Asian Theatre Journal, and of the famous 18th-century Krishna devotional “Alaipaayuthey,” which appears in No End to the Journey as “Restless as the Waves of the Ocean.”
Shankar has published shorter pieces in a wide variety of scholarly and general interest periodicals in India and the US. His scholarly articles, poems, reviews, and literary essays have appeared in such academic journals and popular venues as PMLA, The Conversation, Words without Borders, Tin House, Massachusetts Review, Comparative Literature, Critical Inquiry, Outlook, The Hindu, Pioneer, Village Voice, and The Nation. The scholarly article "The Ruse of Freedom: A Comparative Essay on Ahimsa and Freedom of Expression” was published in Cultural Critique in 2022; and the short story "Chennai Block South: Intrusion of Untouchables" was published in ISLE in 2020.
Aside from being Professor in the Department of English, Shankar was Director of the Center for South Asian Studies and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He was appointed Convener of XVIth Annual Convention of the Forum on Contemporary Theory (India) in 2013. He has been Scholar-in-Residence at University of Houston-Downtown, SOAS Unversity (London) and EFL University (Hyderabad). He was on the Board of External Experts for the Committee for the Nobel Prize for Literature of the Swedish Academy from 2022-2025. He is Convener of the Essays in the Critical Humanities series at np: Press.
Publications in the Last Five Years:
“Afterword: Life History and the Literatures of the World: Notes Toward a Provocation.” Life Writing as World Literature. Ed. Helga Lenart-Cheng and Ioana Luca. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025. 293-299.
“Forget Freedom; or, Thinking about Harm and Harm-less-ness with the Buddha.” Profession Winter 2024-2025. Online publication [15 manuscript pages.] https://profession.mla.org/forget-freedom-or-thinking-about-harm-and-harm-less-ness-with-the-buddha/2024.
“A Servant of the Whole World.” Copper Nickel 36 (Spring 2023): 36-46.
“The Ruse of Freedom: Ahimsa and Freedom of Expression in a Comparative Context.” Cultural Critique 115 (Spring 2022): 1-34. [scholarly article]
“The Modern Adventures of Kanian Poongundranar, Classical Tamil Poet: Reflections on Literatures of the World, Vernacularly Speaking.” Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures, ed. Christina Kulberg and David Watson. New York, Bloomsbury, 2022. 81-100. [scholarly article]
“Writing about Poverty and Caste as a Novelist and Cultural Critic.” Global Inequality: An Intellectual History Project. July 2020. http://global-inequality.com/writing-about-poverty-and-caste/?fbclid=IwAR247Pb2G-3SCDgOGGOaclK5arPgMcXOqP6q6gfLtYHNaSYzv-HnmFlpTp0. In Print: Talking about Global Inequality: Personal Experiences and Historical Perspectives. Ed. Christian Olaf Christiansen et al. Springer, 2023. 117-122. [Interview]
Author in Focus interview. With Prof. Amrita Ghosh (Central Florida University). Cerebration. Special Issue, Winter-Spring 2021-2022. https://cerebration.org/shankaramrita.html [Interview]
“Chennai Block South: Intrusion of Untouchables.” Climate-fiction. ISLE 27.4 (Autumn 2020): 859-76.
“The Verncaular: An Introduction.” South Asian Review (2020). Online & Print. Vol. 41 Issue 2: 191-93.
Guest edited forum on The Verncaular for South Asian Review (2020). Online & Print. Vol. 41 Issue 2. Forum with scholarly notes by Bishnupriya Ghosh, Charu Gupta, Francesca Orsini and Nirmal Selvamony.
"The History of Caste Has Lessons on the Dangers of Social Distancing." The Wire (India). May 1 2020. Co-authored with Charu Gupta and K. Satyanarayana. Originally published on the COVID-19 blog of the British Comparative Literature Association.
“Chennai Block South: Intrusion of Untouchables.” Climate-fiction. ISLE 27.4 (Autumn 2020): 859-76. [short story]
Review of Judith Butler’s The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. Critical Inquiry (July 2020). Online, print 2021.
Grants and Awards in the Last Five Years
CLMP/ Amazon Award for Mānoa Journal, 2025. $5000.
CLMP/ Amazon Award for Mānoa Journal, 2024. $5000.
Mānoa Center for the Humanities and Civic Engagement / Center for South Asian Studies Grant for special issue of Mānoa Journal, 2024. $6850.
Areas of Interest
Postcolonial theory and literature, creative writing (fiction), critical caste studies, cultural journalism, literary theory and cultural studies, translation and translation studies, US literature of immigration
Awards
Senior Fulbright-Nehru Award, 2017-2018.
IPPY Award for Ghost in the Tamarind (2017).
Senior Excellence in Research Award, College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, 2017.
Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, 2008.
Honorable Mention, Rene Wellek Prize Committee of the ACLA, 2013 for Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation, and the Vernacular
Education
MA, Madras University (1986); PhD, University of Texas-Austin (1993)
Courses
Spring Semester 2026
- ENG-320: Introduction to English Studies
Spring Semester 2025
- ENG-320: Intro to English Studies
- ENG-613C: Grad Writing Workshop: Fiction: Managing Focalization, POV and Perspective in Prose Fiction
Fall Semester 2024
- ENG-320: Intro to English Studies
- ENG-463: Studies: Film: Postcolonial Narrative Cinema
Fall Semester 2025
- ENG-271: Introduction to Literature: Genre
- ENG-613D: Nonfiction Workshop
Spring Semester 2024
- ENG-613D: Nonfiction Workshop: Cultural Journalism