Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan and 2019 LSA Collegiate Fellow (Comparative Literature)
About
Niloofar Sarlati received her PhD in cultural studies and comparative literature from the University of Minnesota in 2019. Her work engages linguistic and economic modernities in Britain, in the Persianate world, and at the peripheries of the British Empire during the long-nineteenth century. Reading at the intersection of travel writing, political economy, and linguistic theory, her work revisits theories of commodity-exchange and gift-giving through the prism of social courtesy and verbal pleasantries. Her research on the shaping of commercial politeness also speaks to the literature of financialization today, and draws a longer historical origin for "immaterial" and "affective" labor.
Research Area Keyword(s):
the gift economy, peripheries of empire, postcolonial translation, capitalism, and social courtesy
