Srinivas Aravamudan was appointed dean of the humanities at Duke in July 2009. At Duke, he is Professor in the Departments of English, Romance Studies, and the Program in Literature. He directed the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (2003-2009) and is president of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes from 2007-2012.

He has published Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804 (1999, Duke University Press) and Guru English: South Asian Religion In a Cosmopolitan Language (2006, Princeton University Press and 2007, Penguin India). Aravamudan has also edited a number of other publications and written a large number of scholarly articles and essays on

topics that range from eighteenth-century studies to postcolonial theory, and political philosophy to the theory of fiction. He is currently writing a book on sovereignty and the concept of anachronism.