Roopika Risam

Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and of Comparative Literature at Dartmouth

“Don’t Save the University — Transform It.” Public Books, forthcoming

This essay argues that the long-term future of the university depends on an openness to reframing and rethinking the work that the humanities do in the world. Communicating the sense of possibility of the humanities to students and broader publics, as well as addressing the racial disparities of workload, it suggests, are integral to sustaining the liberal arts - and the university itself.

“Reimagining Impact with Public Humanities.” ADE Bulletin, forthcoming

This article reframes the notion of “impact” for humanities scholarship, arguing that the future of the humanities depends on the ability of scholars to bridge the gaps between universities and communities and foster multi-directional flows of knowledge and expertise. A new understanding of impact that reflects these characteristics, the essay suggests, demonstrates that public humanities is a valuable form of scholarship.

This CNN op-ed challenged U.S. universities’ approaches to reopening campuses in Fall 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. As universities reckon with their complicity with racism and exclusion of Black, brown, and Indigenous students, faculty, staff, and administrators, the piece argues, their policies must protect their most vulnerable students and employees or their stated commitments to equity are nothing more than empty statements.

This exchange with Frances Negrón-Muntaner examines why ethnic studies is crucial now. Topics covered include the role of ethnic studies in overturning the status quo in universities as an insurrection from within and without and the imbrication of universities with racial capitalism and settler colonialism.

This essay argues that the rhetoric of “generosity” in higher education and the strategies touted in critical university studies scholarship as ones that will “save” the university are, in fact, survival tactics that a long genealogy that scholars of color have used to transform higher education into an instrument of social justice and create space to envision new futures for communities of color, often at great risk and cost.

“Du Bois & the Souls of Academic Folk.” Black Perspectives, February 21, 2018. [Link]

This essay proposes that W.E.B. Du Bois’s career is the model of “academic insurgency,” a fluid and flexible mode of academic practice that stresses interdisciplinarity, community engagement, and multiple publication genres and offers another mode of academic life both inside and outside of universities.

This article considers “digital carework” as a frame for the labor required by “diversity” initiatives in higher education. It situates diversity work in relation to affective labor. Using digital humanities as a case, the essay explores how the emergence of information and communication technologies magnifies labor demands and considers how this invisible labor has crucial consequences for scholars undertaking diversity work.

This article explores how structures of academic organizations privilege scholars of the Global North and uses the case of digital humanities to explore how to best challenge the hierarchical dimensions of power in these organizations. It further makes the case for viewing transnational scholarly networks through a logic of diaspora.