Benjamin Conisbee Baer

Benjamin Conisbee Baer

Benjamin Conisbee Baer's research interests include: Marxism, deconstruction, postcolonial literature and theory, translation problems, subaltern predicaments. His teaching, research, and writing focus on problems of representation, language, idiom, and translation; the politics of culture and cultural politics; historical and contemporary modes and situations of subalternity; differentiated patterns of modern imperialism and colonialism; Marxism in an international framework. The parts of the world he works on are generally pockets of South Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa; mainly focusing on modern and contemporary conjunctures. He also teaches Marxist theory, deconstruction, and postcolonial theory. Baer's current book is a series of overlapping case studies that takes on board the complex cultural politics of indigeneity and vanguardism in the interwar period. It examines literary and political problems in instances as diverse as the Harlem Renaissance, the Mexican Revolution, the Gandhian uprisings in India, the fringes of fascism in Europe, and the colonial French Caribbean. New research is on the history of the working class Internationals and efforts toward epistemic change outside Europe. Ongoing group interdisciplinary projects include: Radiating Globality (prehistories of so-called globalization in Senegambia and French India); Rethinking South Asian Studies/Himalayan Regionalism (Kolkata-Kathmandu-Kunming); academic consultancy on Documenting the Mother Tongues of Africa (large consortial multimedia/digital project). 

Working Group Affiliation

The Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya, Statistics and Stories