B.A. 2000 University of California, Santa Cruz
M.A. 2005 University of Washington
Ph.D. 2010 University of Washington
On the PSU faculty since 2012

FIELDS: African American literature; American literature; critical race studies; critical theory

SPECIAL INTERESTS: Race; punishment and mass incarceration; biopolitics; posthumanism; black radicalism; empire; neoliberalism

Anoop Mirpuri's current research explores the relationship between the history of U.S. racial capitalism, the formation of the radical prison movement in postwar America, and debates over the meaning of race, punishment, and violence. He is working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled “Articulations of Violence: Race, Punishment, Modernity, and Posthumanism.” This project looks back on Attica and other prison revolts in the late 1960s and early 70s and considers their implications for recent and contemporary representations of, and philosophical struggles over, race, economic justice, new technologies of confinement and enclosure, and the meaning of “the human.” Prior to arriving at Portland State, Mirpuri was Assistant Professor of English at Drew University, and a research fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at University of Virginia. He is a member of the American Studies Association's Critical Prison Studies Caucus, and a founding member of the Public Rhetorics and Permanent War research cluster.

PUBLICATIONS:

• “Mass-Incarceration, Prisoner Rights, and the Legacy of the Radical Prison Movement,” in The Punitive Turn: Race, Prisons, Justice, and Inequality. Eds. Deborah McDowell, Claudrena Harold, and Juan Battle. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press (forthcoming).
• “Why Can't Kobe Pass (the Ball)? Race and the NBA in an Age of Neoliberalism,” in Commodified and Criminalized: New Racism and African Americans in Contemporary Sports. Eds. David Leonard and C. Richard King. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield (2011).
• “Affect, Ethics, and the Imaginative Geographies of Permanent War: An Interview with Derek Gregory.” Co-authored with Keith P. Feldman and Georgia M. Roberts. Theory & Event 12.3 (2009).
• “Antiracism and Environmental Justice in an Age of Neoliberalism: An Interview with Van Jones.”" Co-authored with Keith P. Feldman and Georgia M. Roberts. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 41.3 (2009).
• “Theories of Race in the Twentieth Century," Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896-Present: From the Age of Segregation to the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press (2009).