Ranjana Khanna

Ranjana Khanna is an American literary critic and theorist, recognized for her interdisciplinary, feminist, and internationalist contributions to post-colonial studies, feminist theory, literature, and political philosophy. Her work is particularly noted for its engagement with melancholia and psychoanalysis, but also extends to post-colonial agency, film, Algeria, area studies, autobiography, Marxism, the visual, and feminist theory. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of York in 1993. Khanna has held academic positions at the University of Washington and the University of Utah before joining Duke University in 2000, where she is a Professor of English, Literature, and Women's Studies. Her theoretical work delves into subjectivity and sovereignty, drawing on thinkers like Derrida, Irigaray, Kant, Marx, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, and Spivak. She directed Women's Studies at Duke from 2007 to 2015 and became the director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute in July 2017.