Poulomi Saha is Chair and co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory and Associate Professor of English. A scholar of Asian American literature, postcolonial studies, and queer and feminist theory, they are currently at work on a book about America’s long obsession with Indian spirituality and why so often those groups come to be called cults. Their first book, An Empire of Touch: Women's Political Labor & The Fabrication of East Bengal (Columbia University Press, 2019) was awarded the Harry Levin Prize for outstanding first book by the American Comparative Literature Association in 2020 and the Helen Tartar First Book Prize (2017).