English Language and Literature PhD candidate, Surabhi Balachander, was spotlighted for her work on place and rural experience in a recent Rackham circular.

Surabhi Balachander grew up in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and graduated from Stanford University in 2017 with a B.A. in English (Creative Writing emphasis) and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Before coming to Michigan in fall 2018, she worked at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. Surabhi’s primary research is concerned with exploring rurality as an identity, specifically as it intersects with racial, ethnic, regional, and other identities, in American literature of the last one hundred years.