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{multiple issues|BLP sources=November 2011|original research=November 2011|peacock=November 2011|primary sources=November 2011|self-published=November 2011}} {notability|Biographies|date=November 2011}}

S. Shankar (full name Subramanian Shankar) is an internationally renowned novelist, cultural critic and translator. He was born on 28 July 1962 in Salem, India, and has lived in the United States since 1987, when he arrived for graduate study. He is the author of two novels, two volumes of criticism and an edited collection. He currently teaches postcolonial studies in the Department of English at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Previously, he taught at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993 and his MA from Madras University in 1986.

Shankar's novel, No End to the Journey, was published in 2005 by Steerforth Press. This quietly masterful novel draws on the Ramayana to tell the story of a father's difficult relationship with his son. It was translated into Spanish by Ana Mata Buil in 2009. Reviewer Michelle Reale in India Currents says that in this novel, "S. Shankar raises the ordinary to the extraordinary. . . . [He] writes with amazing sensitivity and insight against a backdrop of a changing India that at times seems inscrutable to an older generation bound to parents, duty, marriage, and children." Booklist finds that the novel “Resonates with the disappointments and exposed emotions of everyday life and is reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day."

Shankar's first novel, reviewed in World Literature Today as "a minor masterpiece," is A Map of Where I Live. Published in 1997 by Heinemann, a premiere publisher for postcolonial literature in English, this ambitious and provocative political allegory tells the intertwined stories of two societies in social turmoil. Love and political intrigue unfold in the South Indian city of Madras (now Chennai) and in Lilliput, as in great Irish writer Jonathan Swift's proto-novel Gulliver's Travels.

A cultural critic as well as a novelist, Shankar has written pathbreaking criticism on topics ranging from postcolonial literature and colonial discourse to immigrant literature and Indian film. His criticism is characterized by stylistic lucidity, innovative methodology, theoretical rigor, and a keen sense of political stakes. His forthcoming book, Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation, and the Vernacular, will be part of the University of California Press "Flashpoint Series." The press description of this book reads as follows: "In Flesh and Fish Blood S. Shankar breaks new ground in postcolonial studies by exploring the rich potential of vernacular literary expressions. Shankar pushes beyond the postcolonial Anglophone canon and works with Indian literature and film in English, Tamil, and Hindi to present one of the first extended explorations of representations of caste, including a critical consideration of Tamil Dalit (so-called untouchable) literature. Shankar shows how these vernacular materials are often unexpectedly politically progressive and feminist, and provides insight on these oft-overlooked—but nonetheless sophisticated—South Asian cultural spaces. With its calls for renewed attention to translation issues and comparative methods in uncovering disregarded aspects of postcolonial societies, and provocative remarks on humanism and cosmopolitanism, Flesh and Fish Blood opens up new horizons of theoretical possibility for postcolonial studies and cultural analysis."

Shankar is also the author of Textual Traffic: Colonialism, Modernity and the Economy of the Text, published by SUNY Press in 2001. This book, as incisive as it is bold and ambitious in its arguments, analyzes British and African American travel narratives to Africa and India. E. San Juan finds Textual Traffic "fresh and provocative" ; Inderpal Grewal states, “Textual Traffic offers important insights into the term 'colonial modernity,' seeing it not merely as a particular modernity produced under colonial regimes but arguing that all modernity is made possible by colonialism. The readings of Hurston and Wright are valuable and original. This book brings together the fields of postcolonial and African-American literary studies.”

Other critical work has appeared in scholarly journals including the PMLA and the Massachusetts Review. Shankar's article, “Midnight’s Orphans, or A Postcolonialism Worth Its Name,” which appears in Cultural Critique 56 (Winter 2004), has been particularly influential in shaping the field of postcolonial studies through its attention to vernacular postcolonialism.

Shankar's scholarship includes editing. He is co-editor with Louis Mendoza of an anthology of literary works pertaining to the United States. Crossing into America: The New Literature of Immigration was published by New Press in 2003 (paperback 2005). Focusing on the literature of immigration produced since revisions to immigration law in 1965, it has been widely taught and positively reviewed. San Antonio Express News called it “a strong and diverse literary story of multicultural America… likely the most original and best introduction to the new immigration available today for its balanced, informative, moving, and comprehensive offerings.”

Shankar's work as a cultural critic extends into the wider public sphere. He writes cultural journalism and opinion pieces with some regularity for popular publications in India and the US. His work has appeared in such venues as Village Voice, Tin House, The Hindu and Outlook India.

In addition, Shankar is a translator. In 2001, his beautifully rendered translation of the full-length Tamil play Thaneer, Thaneer was published as Water! by Seagull Press in India and by Asian Theatre Journal in the United States. In the preface to this play as well as in his other writings, he has explored the practice and theory of translation.

References http://www.english.hawaii.edu/faculty/?217 [edit] External links http://www.english.hawaii.edu/faculty/?217