Dr. Animesh Bag is a literary and cultural historian and the Mittal Institute Raghunathan Family Fellow, 2026–27. He is working with Prof. Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University Department of History.
Dr. Bag is an Assistant Professor of English at K. K. Das College, University of Calcutta. He holds PhD in English from Jadavpur University and is the author of The Colonial Prison in Bengal, 1860–1945: History, Governmentality, and Colonial Experiences in Literary Writings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).
His postdoctoral project at Harvard examines how early twentieth-century American print culture—including missionary periodicals, newspapers, magazines, and advocacy organizations—shaped racialized understandings of India and Indian immigrants within broader imperial and transnational networks. It also explores how Indian intellectuals in the United States challenged these racialized representations by articulating new forms of political agency and anticolonial thought.
Dr. Bag’s research has appeared in leading international journals, including Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and the Journal for Cultural Research. His work brings literary studies into conversation with history, political theory, and media studies to examine the racial and cultural production of empire, the circulation of imperial knowledge, and the historical relationship between literature and governance.
