Benjamin Conisbee Baer, Princeton University

Profile photo of Benjamin Conisbee Baer, expert at Princeton University

Associate Professor Princeton, New Jersey bencbaer@princeton.edu Office: (609) 258-6127

Bio/Research

I am a comparatist and not an area expert. My teaching, research, and writing focus on problems of representation, language, idiom, and translation; the politics of culture and cultural politics; historical and contemporary modes and situations of subalternity; differentiated patterns of modern i...

Click to Expand >>

Bio/Research

I am a comparatist and not an area expert. My teaching, research, and writing focus on problems of representation, language, idiom, and translation; the politics of culture and cultural politics; historical and contemporary modes and situations of subalternity; differentiated patterns of modern imperialism and colonialism; Marxism in an international framework. The parts of the world I work on are generally pockets of South Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa; and the limits of my scholarship confine me mainly, but not exclusively, to modern and contemporary conjunctures. I have learned from and continue to try and teach Marxist theory, deconstruction, and postcolonial theory.

My current book is a series of overlapping case studies that takes on board the complex cultural politics of indigeneity and vanguardism in the interwar period. It examines literary and political problems in instances as diverse as the Harlem Renaissance, the Mexican Revolution, the Gandhian uprisings in India, the fringes of fascism in Europe, and the colonial French Caribbean. New research is on the history of the working class Internationals and efforts toward epistemic change outside Europe. Hence: translation problems. Ongoing group interdisciplinary projects include: Radiating Globality (prehistories of so-called globalization in Senegambia and French India); Rethinking South Asian Studies/Himalayan Regionalism (Kolkata-Kathmandu-Kunming); academic consultancy on Documenting the Mother Tongues of Africa (large consortial multimedia/digital project).


Click to Shrink <<

Links