Faculty Fellow
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Arts & Science
Ruling Like a Foreigner: On Postcolonial Authoritarianism
Jini Kim Watson (PhD Duke Literature, 2006) is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Her research focuses on the literature and culture of the Asia-Pacific, postcolonial theory, comparative modernities, and theories of architecture and urbanism. Her first book, The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form (Minnesota 2011), rethinks the postwar “miracle economies” of East Asia through a postcolonial and materialist lens, engaging with literature, poetry, film and urban development. She is now at work on a new book project, tentatively titled Ruling Like a Foreigner, which investigates the problem of authoritarianism and conceptions of political modernity in postcolonial literature and theory.
Jini regularly teaches undergraduate classes on Asia-Pacific literature and culture as well as introductory courses on postcolonial studies. Recent graduate seminars have included “Theories of Architecture and Space”, “Place, Space and the Postcolonial” and “Literary Dictatorships”. She is currently co-teaching a graduate seminar with colleague Crystal Parikh on “Meeting Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Studies.”