Sneharika Roy

After a BA in English Literature and an MA in French Literature at the University of Mumbai, Professor Rika Roy obtained a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. As a doctoral student, she taught courses in civilization and literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Sciences Po Lille, Université Marne-la-vallée and Polytechnique. She joined AUP in 2014.

The impetus for her book The Postcolonial Epic (Routledge 2018) stemmed from the realization that postcolonial studies of epic paid surprisingly little attention to classical texts and poetics. In The Postcolonial Epic (Routledge 2018, recipient of the Young Scholars ESSE Book Award), she proposes careful close readings of Virgil and Vyasa in tandem with the “postcolonial epics” of Herman Melville, Derek Walcott and Amitav Ghosh, grounded in classical and postcolonial aesthetics. She continues to engage with postcolonial scholarship, evidenced by her contribution to the MLA Approaches to Teaching volume on Amitav Ghosh (2019) and a chapter on postcolonial epic in the Routledge critical anthology The Epic World (edited by Pamela Lothspiech, 2022). As a scholar of Indian literature, she has also written numerous entries for the Dictionnaire encyclopédique des littératures indiennes (co-edited by Anne Castiang, Claudine Leblanc and Nicolas Dejenne, 2024, recipient of the Prix Émile Senart de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres).

Her current research areas are eclectic, spanning ecocritical readings of ancient Buddhist jātaka folk tales, science fiction and women writers of world literature. She is also pursuing a second BA in Sanskrit Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.

• Ph.D. (2013), Comparative Literature and English, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III
• MA (2010), Littérature Générale et Comparée, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III
• MA (2007), French and Francophone Literature, University of Mumbai
• BA (2005), English Literature, University of Mumbai

Book 

• 2018. The Postcolonial Epic: From Melville to Walcott and Ghosh. Routledge.

Journal Issue Co-editor

• 2014. With Madeleine Laurencin, Commonwealth Essays and Studies vol. 36, no. 2.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

• 2025. “The Kukkura-Jātaka,” M.K. Gandhi and Intizar Husain: Ancient Buddhism Writes Back (and Forth).” Postcolonial Literatures and Arts 3.1, https://doi.org/10.4000/15527   
• 2025. Entries in Dictionnaire encyclopédique des littératures de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, edited by Anne Castaing, Nicolas Dejenne and Claudine Leblanc, Classiques Garnier, 2025:      ---“Amar Chitra Katha,” pp. 59-60.
• “Anglas : langue et littérature,” pp. 76-81.
• “A Suitable Boy (1993) de Vikram Seth, (angl.),” pp. 111-12.
• “Chaudhuri, Amit (1962 - , angl.),” pp. 222-23
• “Diaspora, littérature en anglais,” pp. 275-78.  
• “Ghosh, Amitav (1956- , angl.),” pp 332-34
• “Kesavan, Mukul (1957- , angl.),” pp. 466-67.
• “Mahapatra, Jayanta / Mahāpātra, Jayanta (1928 - , angl., od.),” pp. 524-26.
• “Naidu, Sarojini (1879-1949, angl.),” pp. 596-97.
• “Postcoloniales, études,” pp. 683-684
• “Roy, Arundhati (1959- , angl.),” pp. 764-65.
• “Rushdie, Salman (1947- , angl.),” pp. 768-69.
• “Tharoor, Shashi (1956- , angl.),” pp. 895-96.
• 2024. “Capitalism, Ecosocialism and Reparative Readers in Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest.” Literature 3(4):446-456, https://doi.org/10.3390/literature3040030
• 2024. “A Postcolonial Studies Approach: From Fanon’s Revolutionary Literature to Glissant’s Relation.” The Epic World, edited by Pamela Lothspiech, Routledge, pp. 15-29.  
• 2023. “In the Name of the Father: Orientalism, Zionism and Edward Said’s Foundational Status in Postcolonial Studies.” Postcolonial Literatures and Arts, vol. 1, Open Edition Journals, https://doi.org/10.4000/11oaq  
• 2022. With Claudio Paini, Elizabeth Kinne, Michael Stöpel, Linda Martz, Sneharika Roy. “Building a Signature General Education Program with Alignment and Assessment among Its Founding Principles.” Exemplars of Assessment in Higher Education, vol. 2., edited by Tara Rose and Jane Marie Souza. Routledge, 2023, pp. 211-227.
• 2022. Roy, Sneharika. “Capitalism, Ecosocialism and. Reparative Readers in Ursula Le. Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest.” American Sci-Fi; special issue of Literature vol. 3, no. 4, 2023, 446-456, https://doi.org/10.3390/literature3040030.  
• 2022. “A Postcolonial Studies approach: From Fanon’s Revolutionary Literature to Glissant’s Relation.” The Epic World, edited by Pamela Lothspiech, Routledge, 2023, pp. 30-44.
• 2021. “The Adam Smith Problem: Self-Interest, Empathy and Hermeneutic Irony in the Ibis trilogy.” Amitav Ghosh's Culture Chromosome: Anthropology, Epistemology, Ethics, Space, edited by Asis de, Alessandro Vescovi, pp. 189–205.  
• 2019. “India and its Diaspora’s ‘Epic Relationship.’” MLA Approaches to Teaching the Works of Amitav Ghosh, edited by Gaurav Desai and John Hawley (“MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series”), pp. 166–73.
• 2018. “Allegories of Pathology: Postwar Colonial Expatriates and Imperial Neurosis in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and Derek Walcott’s Omeros.” A Poetics of Neurosis: Narratives of Normalcy and Disorder in Cultural and Literary Texts, edited by Elena Furlanetto and Dietmar Meinel, pp. 179–94.
• 2017. “Facets of Freedom: Social Death and Karmic Rebirth in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies.” Indi@logs: Spanish Journal of India Studies, vol. 4, http://revistes.uab.cat/indialogs/article/view/v4-roy
• 2014. “Postcolonial Epic Rewritings and the Poetics of Relation: A Glissantian Reading of Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel and Derek Walcott’s Omeros.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 51, no.1, pp. 59-71.
• 2014. “Shining in ‘Paradoxical Splendor’: The Staging of the ‘difficult Relation’ in Faulkner’s Sagas as a Prefiguration of Postcolonial Epic.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies, vol. 37, no.1, pp. 79-87.
• 2011. “Postcolonial Engagements with the Epics: Multiple and Movable Tectonic Plates.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies, vol. 34, no.1, pp. 25–32.  
• 2009. “The White Tiger: The Beggar’s Booker.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 57-67.

Book Reviews

• 2020. Review of British Multicultural Literature and Superdiversity, by Ulla Rahbek, Caliban, vol. 63, https://doi.org/10.4000/caliban.8099.   
• 2016. Review in French of Le Postcolonial comparé: anglophonie, francophonie, edited by Claire Joubert, Études anglaises, vol. 69, no. 2, pp. 241-44.
• 2016. Review of Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, by Karthika Naïr, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 52, no .3, pp. 374-75.

• Modern Language Association
• European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies
• Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur

• Postcolonial Studies
• Ancient Indian Literature
• Classical Studies