Surabhi Balachander grew up in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and now lives in Corvallis, Oregon, where she is an assistant professor in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University. She received a B.A. in English and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University, and an M.A. and PhD in English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. For many years, she was a staff member at Stanford’s Bill Lane Center for the American West. Surabhi's research and teaching interests bridge comparative ethnic studies and the environmental humanities in 20th and 21st century American literature. Her work appears in Western American Literature, for which she co-edited the summer 2022 special issue, and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.

surabhi.balachander at oregonstate.edu     |     Instagram      |     Curriculum vitae

Research Interests

Surabhi's current book project, Rewriting Rural America: Race, Environment, and Identity, 1920-2020, posits rurality as a environmentally and socially negotiated identity rather than a measurable characteristic of a place. Working against popular stereotypes—political conservatism, uniform whiteness, unpopulated fields and decaying barns—and strictly policy-based definitions of rurality, it instead prioritizes a comparative ethnic studies approach, considering the rich literary output on rural people of color as well as race’s role in shaping rurality, and vice versa. Surabhi also has a keen interest in questions of allyship, accountability, and racial solidarity. Future project interests include Asian Americans’ relationship to settler colonialism and literary representations of interstate highways.