1. Priyamvada Gopal was born on 1968 and is an Indian-born academic, writer and activist who is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge.
34 Facts About Priyamvada Gopal
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Priyamvada Gopal's primary teaching and research interests are in colonial and postcolonial studies, South Asian literature, critical race studies, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation.
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Priyamvada Gopal has written three books engaging these subjects: Literary Radicalism in India, The Indian English Novel and Insurgent Empire.
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Priyamvada Gopal is from a Brahmin family; she is a critic of the caste system.
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Priyamvada Gopal received a BA in English from the University of Delhi in 1989 and an MA in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1991.
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Priyamvada Gopal received an MA in English from Purdue University in 1993.
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Priyamvada Gopal continued her postgraduate work at Cornell University, earning an MA in English in 1996 and a PhD in colonial and postcolonial literature in 2000.
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Priyamvada Gopal began her teaching career as a graduate instructor in the Department of English at Cornell University in 1995.
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Priyamvada Gopal joined Connecticut College in 1999 as an Assistant Professor of English leaving in 2000.
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Priyamvada Gopal moved to the University of Cambridge in 2001, where she is professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Faculty of English and a teaching fellow at Churchill College.
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Priyamvada Gopal supervises and teaches in the areas of literary criticism, modern tragedy, 19th-century and modern British literature, and postcolonial and related literatures.
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Priyamvada Gopal has written extensively about the impact of empire on contemporary culture in Britain and examined its broader social and cultural effects in South Asia and other former colonial societies.
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Priyamvada Gopal argues that ideas of freedom, justice, and common humanity had themselves taken shape in the struggle against imperialism.
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Priyamvada Gopal has written about the historical amnesia surrounding empire and called for a more honest account of how Britain came to be what it is today.
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Priyamvada Gopal argues that developing a demanding relationship to history is essential to understanding the formative and shaping nature of the imperial project on British life.
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Priyamvada Gopal rejected the rationale given for the group's dissolution and said that the college had instead disbanded the group.
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Priyamvada Gopal said that the disbanding was a way for the college to preempt the resignation of several members of the working group over the college pandering to the tabloid press and other groups.
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Priyamvada Gopal has been a long-standing advocate for 'decolonisation' of Cambridge's English curriculum.
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Priyamvada Gopal argues that decolonisation in the curriculum context is 'about' having access to information and narratives, which reframe our understanding of the multiple lineages and sources of knowledge.
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In October 2019, Priyamvada Gopal criticised the Equality and Human Rights Commission report "Tackling racial harassment: Universities challenged" for its language and not addressing the systemic disadvantages faced by black and minority ethnic students or the ways whiteness dominates power structures and pedagogy.
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In June 2018, Priyamvada Gopal alleged racial profiling by college porters at the gate of King's College, Cambridge.
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Priyamvada Gopal said that she was subjected to racial profiling and aggression by the porters and gatekeepers of King's and that porters frequently hassled non-white staff and students at the gates.
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Priyamvada Gopal told a journalist from The Sunday Times it "was behaviour I very much doubt a white man of middle age who identified himself as a lecturer" would have faced.
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Priyamvada Gopal announced that she would no longer teach at King's until there was a resolution to the problem.
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Students of English at King's issued an open letter in support of Priyamvada Gopal, urging the college to offer her a "proper apology", and two other supervisors from the English department said they would refuse to teach at King's.
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King's denied that Priyamvada Gopal had been subject to racial profiling, and claimed that the CCTV footage of the incident revealed no wrongdoing by staff.
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Priyamvada Gopal said that she received hate mail following her announcement.
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Priyamvada Gopal said senior college members conveyed their private apologies and assured her that the college was taking the problem seriously.
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Shortly afterwards, Priyamvada Gopal rescinded her decision to withdraw her labour from the college.
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Priyamvada Gopal argued the report cherry-picked data and minimised and denied structural and institutional racism, asserting that it read like a propaganda document rather than a piece of research.
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Priyamvada Gopal claimed that her remark was a reference to Goebbels, not a comparison.
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In January 2022, Priyamvada Gopal tweeted that historian David Abulafia's description of fellow historian David Olusoga as 'eloquent' could sound dismissive, particularly when pertaining to writers of colour.
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Priyamvada Gopal claimed that the news editor of Varsity concocted the story about her supposed charge of 'racism' against Abulafia, claiming she had become a target because she had criticised the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.
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Priyamvada Gopal said that the news editor was among those who lobbied to adopt the definition in full.