shamara


Shama Rangwala

Photo of Shama Rangwala

Department of Humanities

Assistant Professor
General Education Coordinator

Email: shamara@yorku.ca

Media Requests Welcome
Accepting New Graduate Students


My intermedia and interdisciplinary research focuses on the reproductions of racial capitalism throughout the modern history of settler colonialism and across narrative forms, conceptualizing "ideological adaptation,” which I define as textual adaptations that track the adaptation of ideology itself. My current research examines early-20th-century canonical American novels and their early-21st-century film adaptations in relation to the reproduction of the mythologies that sustain the settler-colonial nation, along with the adaptations of liberalism in our contemporary moment.

My teaching interests include theories of racial capitalist formations; literary and critical theory; film, media, and cultural studies; and 19th- and 20th-century Anglophone literature. I am passionate about teaching students how to take their education outside of the classroom and university.

As the PI of the public humanities project Pedagogy and Praxis, I am developing an outreach project "Progressive Publics: Connecting Scholarship and Media." As part of Pedagogy and Praxis, I also co-host a popular culture podcast (Replay) with journalist Desmond Cole.

My academic writing has appeared in Public, English Studies in Canada, and Canadian Review of American Studies. My public-facing writing has appeared in Jacobin, Public Books, The Star, The Globe and Mail, The Sprawl, and Canadaland. I am the founding editor of Pyriscence, a culture and politics website, was a regular panelist on Alberta Primetime (CTV) from 2018-2022, and am a frequent contributor to news, podcasts, and other media. I served on the Editorial Board of Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies from 2019-2023 and am currently on the Board of Briarpatch Magazine.

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Degrees

PhD, University of Alberta
MA, McGill University
BA Honours, McGill University

Research Interests

Culture and Cultural Studies , Race and Racism, Literary Studies, American Studies, Film Studies, Modernism