Supritha Rajan

Supritha Rajan

Associate Professor of English

Director of Graduate Studies

MA Advisor

PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Office Location
415 Morey Hall

Curriculum Vitae

Research Overview

Supritha Rajan’s scholarship is situated at the intersection of literature, intellectual history, and philosophy, with an emphasis on the Romantic and Victorian literary periods.  Her first book, A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Sacred Economics in Nineteenth-Century Britain, was awarded the 23rd annual Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book. The book reconsiders traditional understandings of capitalism by examining the shared disciplinary genealogies of nineteenth-century literature, anthropology, and political economy. The MLA selection committee stated in their award citation that “A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Sacred Economics in Nineteenth-Century Britain offers an important new perspective on debates around secularization, providing a spellbinding account of how the emergence of the modern disciplines and discourses of political economy, anthropology, and the novel reconstituted the magical and communal, thereby seamlessly revealing how the sacred reemerged in our modern world…Rajan’s synchronic analysis may serve as an empirical and interpretive model with which to examine our moment’s intersection of ethics, economy, and culture, as well as the intricacies of neoliberalism and its narrative(s) and dominant ethos.” 

Rajan is currently at work on a second scholarly book project, entitled Transparent Forms: Thinking, Feeling, and Doing in the Human and Natural Sciences (1780-1890).  Transparent Forms draws on eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature, philosophy, and histories of science to investigate the formation of disciplinary-specific temperaments and the overlapping methodologies and cognitive/affective attitudes that operated across the human and natural sciences after the Enlightenment.

Her scholary articles have appeared in such journals as Victorian Literature and Culture and Nineteenth-Century Prose, as well as in edited collections published by Routledge, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press. Her research has received fellowship support from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Humanities Center at the University of Rochester. In addition to her scholarship, Rajan is a poet and her first poetry collection, Fabula, will be published by Unbound Edition Press (Fall 2027). She has also completed a second, book-length sequence of poems, entitled Mosaic, and is at work on a third collection.

Research Interests

  • Nineteenth-century British literature & intellectual history
  • Literary Theory
  • Creative writing (poetry)
  • Political & moral philosophy
  • Interdisciplinary studies

Selected Publication Covers

Selected Publications

Works in Progress

  • Transparent Forms: Thinking, Feeling, and Doing in the Human and Natural Sciences, 1780-1890 (book manuscript; in preparation)
  • Fabula (under contract, Unbound Edition Press, expected date of publication: Fall 2027)
  • Mosaic (completed manuscript of poems, under consideration at various presses/contests)

Books

  • A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Sacred Economics in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Spring 2015, University of Michigan Press)

Journal Articles

  • “Eliot Among Philosophers and Scientists,” The Oxford Handbook of George Eliot. Eds. Juliette Atkinson and Elisha Cohn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2025, 61-79. (invited essay)
  • “Pictures of Nature: Observation and Description in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species,” Nineteenth-Century Literatures in Transition Series: the 1850s. Cambridge University Press. Eds. Gail Marshall, Marion Thain, Andrew Stauffer, 2025, 18-44. (invited essay)
  • “Regret Without Limit: the Ends of Agency and Genre in George Eliot’s Middlemarch.” Victorian Literature and Culture. 49.2 (2021): 259-300.
  • “The Future of Economic Criticisms Past.” Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature. Eds. Talia Schaffer and Dennis Denisoff. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2020, 237-247. (invited essay)
  • “The Epistemology of Trust and Realist Effect in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House.” Nineteenth-Century Literature. 72.1 (June 2017): 64-106.
  • “Animating Household Gods: Value, Totems, and Kinship in Victorian Anthropology and Dickens’s Dombey and Son.” Victorian Literature and Culture. 42.1 (March 2014): 33-58.
  • “Networking Magic: Andrew Lang and the Science of Self-Interest.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. 64 (October 2013).
  • “Sacred Commerce: Rites of Reciprocity in Ruskin.” Nineteenth-Century Prose. 35.1 (Spring 2008): 181-199.

Poems

  • “Malabar Daffodil Orchid.” Colorado Review (forthcoming)
  • “In the Languages of Rain.” Colorado Review (forthcoming)
  • “Villanelle: Migration Hour.” Colorado Review (forthcoming)
  • “Stone 284.” Poetry London (forthcoming)
  • “Ghazal.” On the Seawall (forthcoming)
  • “Rinsed Rice.” On the Seawall (forthcoming)
  • “Lion Body.” Revel (forthcoming)
  • “The Garden.” Revel (forthcoming)
  • “Future Conditional.” Revel (forthcoming)
  • “Stone 154.” New American Writing. Vol. 43, 2026.
  • “Stone 209.” New American Writing. Vol. 43, 2026.
  • “Stone 75.” Diode Poetry Journal. Volume 18, No 3, 2025. (online)
  • “Stone 365.” Diode Poetry Journal. Volume 18, No 3, 2025. (online)
  • “Stone 58.” Sixth Finch. Summer 2025. (online)
  • “Stone 55.” Action, Spectacle. Summer 2025. (online)
  • “Stone 47.” Bennington Review. Issue 14, 2025.
  • “Field Guide.” Literary Matters. Issue 15.3, Spring/Summer 2024.
  • “My Father Walks Out of an English Book and Into An English Field.” The Threepenny Review. Issue 176, Winter 2024. (featured on Poetry Daily)
  • “Boy on Cycle.” Beloit Poetry Journal. Vol. 73.1, Spring/Summer 2023.
  • “Home Accidens.” New Orleans Review. Issue 48. Spring/Summer, 2022.
  • “Lie Still and Dream.” Poetry Northwest. Vol. 13.2. Winter & Spring, 2019.
  • “Landscape with Figure Turning.” New England Review. Vol. 39.3, 2018.
  • “Bharata’s Remorse.” Salt Hill. No. 38. Spring, 2017.
  • "Repair." Colorado Review. Spring 2016.
  • “Ode to an Error.” The Antioch Review. Fall, 2015.
  • “Fabula.” Literary Imagination. February 1, 2009.
  • “The Orphan of Time.” Poetry Northwest. Spring/Summer, 2007.
  • “The Abduction of Sita.” Puerto del Sol. Vo. 41.1. Fall, 2006. 
  • “Lava and Kusa Recite The Ramayana.” Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts. Vol. 4, 2005.

Selected conference participation

  • “Tempered Knowledge: Disposition, Disciplinarity, and the Aftermath of Victorian Method Wars.” The North American Victorian Studies Association. Georgetown University. Washington DC. Nov. 13-16, 2025.
  • Not Res but Verba: Keywords, Exemplarity, and Representing the Character of an Age.” Eighteenth-Century Division. Modern Language Association. New Orleans, LA. Jan. 9- 12, 2025.
  • “Unruly States: Literary Studies and the Cures of Poetry in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Theory of Education.” The North American Society for Studies in Romanticism. Georgetown University. Washington DC. Aug. 15-18, 2024.
  • “Method as Cure: Disciplining the Temperaments in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Science.” Victorian Division. Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. Jan. 3-6, 2019.
  • “Scales of Inequality: Political Economy and the Victorian Novel from Center to Periphery.” The North American Victorian Studies Association. St. Petersburg, FL. Oct. 11-14, 2018.
  • “The Social Life of Personae: Sensibility and the Victorian Man of Science and Letters.” The North American Victorian Studies Association. Arizona State University. Phoenix, AZ. Nov. 3-5, 2016. 
  • “Autonomy and its Affects: Regret and Sympathy in Rousseau and Smith.” The International Adam Smith Society and the Rousseau Society. University of Glasgow. Glasgow, Scotland. July 20-22, 2015.
  • “Characterizing Knowledge: George Eliot and the Enlightenment Reclassification of Temperament.” The North American Victorian Studies Association. Western University. London, Ontario (CA). Nov. 13-16, 2014. 
  • “The Tempo of Judgment: Sensing the Pause in Walter Pater’s The Renaissance.” Victorian Division. Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. Jan. 9-12, 2014.
  • “Knowledge By Proxy: the Epistemology of Trust in Dickens’s Bleak House.” The North American Victorian Studies Association. University of Southern California. Pasadena, CA. October 23-27, 2013.
  • “Networked Magic: Lang and the Science of Self-Interest.” The North American Victorian Studies Association. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, WI. September 27-30, 2012.

Teaching

  • Courses in nineteenth-century British literature, critical theory, and creative writing.

Honors

  • Pushcart Prize Nomination, “Boy on Cycle,” Beloit Poetry Journal. Vol. 73. No. 1, Spring/Summer 2023.
  • Bridging Fellowship, Humanities Center, University of Rochester, Spring 2023.
  • Best New Poets 2023 Nomination, “Homo Accidens,” New Orleans Review. Issue 48, Spring/Summer 2022.
  • Pushcart Prize Nomination, “Lie Still and Dream,” Poetry Northwest. Vol. 13.2, Winter/Spring 2019.
  • Best New Poets 2018 Nomination, “Landscape with Figure Turning,” New England Review. Vol. 39.3, 2018.
  • Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book, 2016.
  • Research Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2015-2016.
  • William Dougald MacMillan Award for the best dissertation of the year, Department of English, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2008-2009.
  • Richard Hugo Prize, Poetry Northwest, “The Orphan of Time,” Spring/Summer 2007.
  • Pushcart Prize Nomination, “Lava and Kusa Recite The Ramayana,” Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts. Vol. 4, 2005.
  • Fred and Joan Thomson Award for outstanding dissertation work in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century British studies, Department of English, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2005-2006.
  • Evan Frankel Dissertation Fellowship, Department of English, UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall 2006.