Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies
nikhitao@uchicago.edu
Wieboldt 105A
Office Hours:
By appointment
773.834.2836
PhD, Harvard University, 2022
Teaching at UChicago since 2024
Research Interests:
Contemporary francophone and world literature, critical race studies and decolonial theory, archipelagic studies, environmental humanities (including oceanic humanities), and medical humanities
Journal issues
- Co-editor (with Mona El-Khoury)“Rencontres du postcolonialisme et de l’écocritique.” Special issue, Nouvelles Études Francophones, vol. 38, no. 2, 2023.
Peer-reviewed articles
- "Archipelagic Stories, Anguilliform Resistances." Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 48-57, 2024.
- “Les Enjeux de la chair corallienne chez Khal Torabully.” Nouvelles Études Francophones, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 119–131, 2023.
- “An Archipelagic Node in Global Migration? The Stakes of Comparison and Irony in Nathacha Appanah’s Tropique de la violence.” Comparative Literature, vol. 74, no. 2, pp. 219–232, June 2022.
Peer-reviewed book chapters
- "Croaking Toads and Singing Youth: When the Sega Angaze Meets the Francophone Novel." Transoceanic and Transmedial Imaginaries in the Indian Ocean, ed. Ute Fendler and Clarissa Vierke, pp. 108-126, 2025.
Recent Courses in RLL
- FREN 24555/34555, CEGU 24555/34555, RDIN 24555/34555 Ecological Explorations of the Francophone World (Winter 2025)
- FREN 26770, CEGU 26770, CMLT 26771, RDIN 26770 Stories of Oceans and Archipelagos (Spring 2025)
- FREN 27777 Disrupting Environmental Narratives: Colonialism, Race and Toxicity (Spring 2026)
- FREN 28888/38888 Mosquitos and Morphine: A Seminar in the Global Medical Humanities (Autumn 2025)
- FREN 42200 Fictions of the Indian Ocean (Spring 2026)
- FREN 46000, CMLT 46100, GNSE 46001, RDIN 46000 Beyond the Blanks of History: When Women of Color Reclaim the Narrative (Spring 2025)
Subject Area:
French and Francophone Studies