Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2018
M.A., University of Toronto, 2011
B.A., University of Toronto, 2010

Currently Dr. Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar is Assistant Professor at the Department of English; formerly she was ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022) at the same department. Her research examines the relationships between postcolonial fiction, poststructuralism and the history of technology, three overlapping areas that she approaches through an engagement with histories of colonialism and capitalism. She has additional research interests in the history of critique, race and ethnicity studies, and Marxist approaches to literature. 

Dr. Makkar's book project, tentatively titled Engimas of Capital: Literature and Theory in the Late Twentieth Century, explores the entanglement of theory and postcolonial literature, by theorizing the role of 'enigmas' in the novels of J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi. Some of her work appears or is forthcoming in Modern Fiction Studies, Contemporary Literature and boundary 2.

“‘Recalling This’: Language and Irony in Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story (1990),” Modern Fiction Studies, forthcoming.

 “More on the Missing Half Second: A Review of Hayles and Hansen,” boundary 2 47.1 (February 2020): 215-238

 “A Trademark on Irony: J.M. Coetzee’s Formalism, Digital Copyright, Literary Proprietorship,” Contemporary Literature 59.2 (Summer 2018): 204-231