Draft:Amritjit Singh

Singh was born on October 20, 1945, in Rawalpindi (then British India) and was raised in Ambala Cantonment, India. He studied at Panjab University and Kurukshetra University before completing a Ph.D. in English at New York University in 1973. His doctoral dissertation, The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance: A Thematic Study, was supervised by William M. Gibson, James W. Tuttleton, and novelist Ralph Ellison.

Singh began his teaching career in the 1970s, holding positions at institutions including New York University and the University of Delhi. Between 1974 and 1977, he served as Academic Associate and Deputy Director of the American Studies Research Centre (ASRC) in Hyderabad, then the largest American Studies collection outside the United States.

He subsequently taught for two decades at Rhode Island College, where he was named the Mary Tucker Thorp Professor of Arts and Sciences^[3] and received a Distinguished Faculty Award.^[4] In 2005, he joined Ohio University as Langston Hughes Professor of English and African American Studies, later becoming Professor Emeritus.^[1]

Singh has held visiting appointments at institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, Wesleyan University, and Osmania University. He has served as President of MELUS,^[2] the South Asian Literary Association, and the United States chapter of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. Singh has received fellowships from organizations including the Fulbright Program, Ford Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and National Endowment for the Humanities.^[5][6]

Singh has also served in editorial roles for the journals MELUS and the South Asian Review, and as senior editor of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas (MELA) Series published by Rutgers University Press.

Singh's research focuses on African American Studies, ethnic American literatures, South Asian Studies, and postcolonial theory, with an emphasis on transnational and comparative approaches. His work has examined the relationships between race, migration, and literary production in the context of the United States and South Asia.

His edited collections have been discussed in journals such as American Literary History where they are noted for their comparative treatment of ethnic American and postcolonial literatures.^[7][8] His work has also been reviewed in MELUS and related journals within the context of multi-ethnic American literary studies.^[9][10][11] Singh's Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature (2000) was referenced in overviews of postcolonial and American studies, including Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts^[12] and American Culture Studies: An Introduction to American Culture^[13]. Additionally, his work, including The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance (1976; revised ed. 1994), has been noted for its contribution to critical studies of African American literary history in publications such as African American Review.^[14][15][16]

Singh's scholarship has also contributed to the study of South Asian literature, including through works such as Indian Literature in English, 1827–1979: A Guide to Information Sources (1981)^[17] and the co-edited special issue of Comparative Literature Studies (2016) focused on comparative South Asian literatures.

In 2007, Singh received the Lifetime Achievement Award from MELUS.^[18] In 2014, he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award in Literary Scholarship by the South Asian Literary Association^[19] and Ohio University's Faculty Award for Excellence in Global Engagement.^[20]

In 2017, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press published a festschrift in his honor: Crossing Borders: Essays on Literature, Culture, and Society in Honor of Amritjit Singh.

Singh has authored, edited, or co-edited more than fifteen books, including:

• The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance (1976; revised ed. 1994)
• Indian Literature in English, 1827–1979: A Guide to Information Sources (1981)
• India: An Anthology of Contemporary Writing (1983)
• The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations (1989)
• Memory, Narrative, and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures (1994)
• Memory and Cultural Politics: New Approaches to American Ethnic Literatures (1996)
• Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature (2000)
• The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader (2003)
• Revisiting India's Partition: Essays on Memory, Culture, and Politics (2016)
• Critical Perspectives on Chitra Divakaruni: Feminism and Diaspora (2022)

He has also edited reprint editions of works by Wallace Thurman^[21] and Richard Wright.^[22][23]

Singh's own poetry and his translations from Punjabi literature have appeared in journals such as Edinburgh Review, New Letters, and Toronto Review. In 2011, he published The Circle of Illusion, a volume of translations of Punjabi poems by Gurcharan Rampuri, co-translated with poet Judy Ray.