Gautam Basu Thakur, PhD

Director, critical theory minor

email: gautambasuthakur@boisestate.edu

Gautam Basu Thakur is a critical theorist working in the fields of comparative cultural studies; postcoloniality and globalization studies; British Literature of the Empire; race and sexuality studies; and world cinema. More specifically, he is interested in theoretical psychoanalysis and its interventions in postcolonial studies; the British Empire and its afterlife in global/transnational literary and (new) media cultures; film; and comparative cultural politics.

He is the author of  Postcolonial Theory and Avatar (2015) and Postcolonial Lack: Identity, Culture, Surplus (2020), and co-editor of Lacan and the Nonhuman (2018) and Reading Lacan’s Seminar VIII: On Transference (2020).

Gautam Basu Thakur is the recipient of The Faculty Excellence Award in the College Arts and Sciences, Boise State University,  Jan 2020.

Education

• Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• M.Phil., English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta
• Certificate in Critical Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• M.A., English, Jadavpur University
• B.A. Hons., English, Jadavpur University

Publications

Books:

• Postcolonial Lack: Identity, Culture, Surplus (SUNY, 2020).
• Reading Lacan’s Seminar VIII: Transference, co-edited book (Palgrave, 2020).
• Postcolonial Theory & Avatar (Bloomsbury, 2015).
• Lacan and the Nonhuman. co-edited book (Palgrave, 2018).

Recent Articles

• “Holes, Pits & Caves: Empire, Ecology, and Ontology,” in Victoriographies: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, 1790-1914, Special Issue Edited by Jolene Zigarovich, 13.3 (2023): 321–339.
• “‘You Should Pray I Choose the Latter’: Rioting, Violence, & Jouissance,” PsyArt, v. 26 (2022): 129-155.
• “‘Rezem para que eu escolha a última’: rebelião, violência e gozo.” Translated in Brazilian from “‘You Should Pray I Choose the Latter’: Rioting, Violence, and Jouissance,” PsyArt, v. 26 (2022). In A. Guerra, D. Hook e R. Lima (orgs). Brazil, São Paulo: n-1 Edições. (2023).
• “This Elaborate Make Belief of Imperfection: Nonsense, Excess, and Ab-sense in Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol,” Jadavpur University Essays and Studies XXXIII, Special Issue on Lacan and Literature, (Fall 2019 [pub. Spring 2021]): 93-120.

Recent Book Chapters

• “Between Nowhere and Goodbye: Love Clichés (and beyond) in Literature and Film” in Death and Love: Psychoanalysis and Existentialism by Todd McGowan and Julie Resche (forthcoming 2024).
• “Fanon’s “Zone of Non-Being”: Blackness and the Politics of the Real” in Lacan and Race, ed. S. George & D. Hook, Routledge 2021; pp. 284-298.
• “Beyond Reason: The Subject of Desire and Enjoyment in Populism” in Populism and Its Limits: After Articulation, ed. P. Chakravarty, Bloomsbury 2020; pp. 99-124. (coauthor)
• “Mind the Gap: Commentary on Session XV” in Reading Lacan’s Seminar VIII:
  Transference, ed. Gautam Basu Thakur & Jonathan Dickstein, Palgrave 2020; pp.257-266.
• “Preface” in Reading Lacan’s Seminar VIII: Transference, ed. Gautam Basu Thakur and Jonathan Dickstein, Palgrave 2020; pp. v-vii. (coauthor).
• “A Strangeness Beyond Reckoning: The Animal as Surplus in Postcolonial Literature” in Postcolonial Animalities, ed. Amit Baishya and Suvadip Sinha, Routledge, September 2019; pp. 29-47.

Keynote, Plenary, Invited Talks

• Invited Plenary speaker at the 2nd. International Colloquium on Decolonization and Psychoanalysis – Ubuntu. Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, November 11–15, 2023.
• Keynote Speaker at K. K. Das College, Calcutta, India, conference on “Crime and Punishment in Colonial India.” December 9, 2022.
• Invited Speaker at Freud Museum, London. “Occupying Psychoanalysis in a Post-Colonial World: Fanon’s “zone of nonbeing” and the $ubject of racism.” Online Speaker Series organized by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. April 23, 2022.
• Plenary Speaker at the International online conference on “Contemporary Issues in South Asian Literature and Culture Studies” organized by Department of Languages, Manipal University, Jaipur, India, March 30-31, 2021.
• Plenary Speaker at online Workshop on The Mythos of Postcolonial Futures: Re-presenting India in Science Fiction” organized by SGTB Khalsa College, Delhi University, India, in association with Bloomsbury Press, January 29-30, 2021.
• Invited Speaker at online Workshop on “Trajectories of Populism” organized by the Department of English, Delhi University, December 5, 2020.
• Invited Speaker at “Fanon’s Ontology.” International e-conference on “Re-Thinking the Postcolonial: Texts and Contexts” organized by New Literaria, An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities in collaboration with the Department of English of Assam University, Silchar, India. September 27, 2020. (Invited by Tanmoy Kundu).
• Invited Talk, “Dangerous Freedom: Fanon, Blackness, and the Death Drive.” Colorado College, November 4 2019 (Invited by Scott Krzych).

Courses

• ENGL 588 “Decolonizing Theory, Radicalizing Theory: The Graduate Theory
• ENGL 530 Graduate Seminar on “Literature & Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis”
• ENGL 595  “Psychoanalysis and Sexuality”
• ENGL 393 “Theory: To Witness,” Introduction to Literary Criticism & Critical Theory
• ENGL 393 “Reading Theory with Sherlock Holmes” / Fall 2013 / Summer 2013
• HCS 300 “Studies in World Literatures” (cross-listed with Global Studies, Gender, World Languages)
• ENGL 365 “Victorian Otherness: Philosophy, Science, & Fantasy in 19th Century Literature”
• HCS 250: “Storytelling and Cinema”
• GLOBAL STUDIES 200 “Global Cinema”
• UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIONS 100 “Literary Things”