Malcolm Sen
Associate Professor
Faculty Bio
Malcolm Sen is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research interests focus on questions of justice, statecraft, and postcolonial politics as they emerge in this contemporary moment of climate crisis. At UMass Amherst he teaches courses on environmental humanities and postcolonial studies at the graduate level, and Irish literature, global Anglophone literature, and climate fiction at the undergraduate level. Before joining UMass, Malcolm was an “Irish Research Council Elevate Fellow” at Harvard University’s Center for the Environment. He was also awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, University of Notre Dame.
See a list of some his publications below. Malcolm has also written for The Irish Times, The Chicago Review of Books, and History Ireland. He has been a commentator and radio-essayist on Irish radio, has worked as a researcher for a PBS documentary series, and as a researcher for Fairtrade Ireland. He has a series on Irish literature and the Environmental Humanities found here. You can follow him on Twitter: @malcolmsen
Research Areas
- Environmental Humanities
- Postcolonial Studies
- Irish Studies
- South Asian Studies
Publications
Books
Unnatural Disasters: Irish Literature, Climate Change and Sovereignty (Under Contract with Syracuse University Press)
The Cambridge History of Irish Literature and the Environment
Malcolm Sen, Ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming 2021)
Race in Irish Literature and Culture
Malcolm Sen and Julie McCormack Weng, Eds., (New York: Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming 2021)
Postcolonial Studies and the Challenges of the New Millennium
Lucienne Loh and Malcolm Sen, Eds. (London: Routledge. 2016).
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Forthcoming 2021. “Particulate Matter and Planetary Aesthetics: Post-Statist Ecologies in James Joyce,” Chris Langlois, Ed., Irish Literature and the World (London: Bloomsbury).
Forthcoming 2021. “Sovereignty at the Margins: The Oceanic Future of the Subaltern,” in Barbara Haberkamp-Schmidt, Ed., Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World (Amsterdam: Brill).
2020. “Dragon-Ridden Days: Yeats, Apocalypse and the Anthropocene,” International Yeats Studies: Vol. 4 : Issue 1 , Article 10.
2019. “Risk and Refuge: Contemplating Precarity in Contemporary Irish Fiction,” Irish University Review, vol. 49., Issue 1.
2019. “Godhuli / Twilight,” Matthew Schneider Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy, Eds., An Ecotopian Lexicon (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
2016. “Introduction,” Postcolonial Studies and the Challenges of the New Millennium (Lucienne Loh and Malcolm Sen, Eds. (London: Routledge).
2013. “Bones of Corals Made: Ecology, War and Nostalgia” Textual Practice (Vol. 27, Issue 3).
2012. “Modernity, Secularism and the Sacred”, Oona Frawley, Ed., Memory Ireland, Vol. 1 (New York: Syracuse University Press).
2010. “Mythologizing a Mystic: W B Yeats on the Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore”, History Ireland (July Issue).
2009. “Spatial Justice: The Ecological Imperative and and Postcolonial Development”, Journal of Postcolonial Writing (Vol. 45, Issue 4).
2008. “The Retina of the Glance: Re-Visiting Joyce’s Orientalism”, Dublin James Joyce Journal (Vol. 1, Issue 1).
2007. “From Internationalism to Authenticity: The Changing Geographies of Ireland”, The Internationalist Review of Irish Culture (Vol. 1, Issue 1).
2006. “The Uncanny Orient: Yeats and India”, Tadgh Foley and Maureen O’Connor, Eds., Ireland and India (Dublin: Irish Academic Press).
Selected Book Reviews
2017. “Scaling Modernity”, Breac: Journal of Irish Studies.
2018. “What Zombies Can Teach Us About Climate Change”, The Chicago Review of Books.
2017. “Why Climate Fiction Matters”, The Chicago Review of Books.
2014. “A Damning Analysis of Indian Injustice and Inequality”, The Irish Times, 2nd April. Reviewed Book: Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, An Uncertain Glory (London: Penguin).
2012. “Hema Macherla”, Wasafiri. Reviewed Book: Hema Macherla, Blue Eyes (Edinburgh: The Linen Press).
2010. “Danger and the Dynasty”, The Irish Times. Reviewed Book: Fatima Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword (London: Jonathan Cape).
2009. “Intercontinental Cooking Adds Flavour to Migrant's Memoirs“, The Irish Times, Reviewed book: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food (London: Portobello).
2009. “Repossessing Rhetoric”, The Irish Times, 11th July. Reviewed Book: Arundhati Roy, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy (London: Hamish Hamilton).
2009. “India’s Poverty Rendered Realistic and Meaningless”, The Irish Times, 25th July. Reviewed Book: Aravind Adiga, Between the Assassinations (London: Atlantic Book).
2008. “Love Marriage”, The Irish Times, 24th May. Reviewed Book V.V. Ganeshanathan, Love Marriage: A Novel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson).
2007. “Ireland, India and Nationalism”, Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies (Vol. 37, Issue 2). Reviewed Book: Ireland, India and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Selected Lectures and Conference Presentations
2020. Invited Lecture. “Sovereignty at the Margins: Precarious Lives in the Bengal Delta”
Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University, NJ.
2020. Invited Lecture. “Irish Studies in a Warming World”
“Atlantic Disruptions: Ireland and the US Beyond Brexit,” organized by the Clinton Institute for American Studies (University College Dublin), Dartmouth College, NH.
2019. Invited Lecture. “Liquid State: Oil, Water and the Assemblage of the Anthropocene”
Furman University, SC.
2019. Roundtable Participant: “Vanishing Islands and Flooded Cities”
Modern Language Association International Symposia, Lisbon, Portugal.
2019. Roundtable Participant: “Doing Irish Studies Differently”
American Conference for Irish Studies (Boston College, Boston, MA).
2018. Invited Lecture.“Irish Studies at the End of the World: Literature and Climate Change”
Bridgewater State University, MA.
2018. Roundtable Participant in the following panels:
- Comparison in Irish Studies
- New Directions in Famine Historiography
- Irish Studies after Trump
American Conference for Irish Studies (University College Cork, Ireland).
2017. “‘Timekillers and Spacemakers’: James Joyce’s Planetary Vision”
American Conference for Irish Studies - Mid-Atlantic Chapter (Georgetown University, Washington DC).
2017. “Trespass: Sovereignty and the Subaltern in the Bay of the Bengal”
Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS) Annual International Conference (University of Bonn, Germany).
2017. “Future Tense: Contemporary Irish Literature and Climate Change”
International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, Annual International Conference (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore).
2017. Invited Lecture. “Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide” (Jones Library, Amherst MA).
2017. Invited Lecture. “From Hurricane to Climate Change”
Roundtable Participant (Hitchcock Centre for the Environment, Amherst MA).
2016. Invited Lecture. “Literary Study and Climate Change” (Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India).
2016. Invited Lecture. “Dúchas: Irish Landscapes, Environmental Legacies” (New York University).
2016. Invited Lecture. “Joyce in the Anthropocene”, Trieste James Joyce Summer School (University of Trieste).
2016. “Exile in the Anthropocene: Reading Joyce in the 21st Century”, American Conference for Irish Studies Annual Conference, University of Notre Dame, IN.
2015. Invited Lecture. “The Anthropocene”, University of Virginia, VA.