About
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. As a graduate student at Michigan, she hopes to collaborate across disciplines and welcomes those with related interests to reach out to her via email.
Major fields of study:
American literature 1920-present, comparative ethnic studies, literature and environment
Interests:
Rurality, racial and ethnic identity, agriculture, region (American West and Midwest), landscapes, pastoral theory, poetry and poetics, contemporary poets, water, immigration, climate change, ecology, environmental policy and literature, invasive species
