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Priyamvada Gopal

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Priyamvada Gopal
Gopal in 2019
Born (1968-08-27) 27 August 1968 (age 56)
TitleProfessor of Postcolonial Studies
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Delhi
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Cornell University
ThesisMidnight's labors: Gender, nation and narratives of social transformation in transitional India, 1932–1954 (2000)
Doctoral advisorBiodun Jeyifo[1]
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
Churchill College

Priyamvada Gopal (born 1968)[2] is an Indian-born academic, writer and public intellectual who is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her primary teaching and research interests are in colonial and postcolonial studies, South Asian literature, critical race studies, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation.[3] She has written three books engaging these subjects: Literary Radicalism in India (2005), The Indian English Novel (2009) and Insurgent Empire (2019).[4] Her third book, Insurgent Empire, was shortlisted for the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.[5][6]

Gopal's work has appeared in several newspapers and online publications, and she has contributed occasionally to radio and television programmes in Britain and elsewhere.[3][7] Her remarks about race and empire have gained media attention and condemnation.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] In 2021, she was named one of the world's top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine.[15]

Biography

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Early life

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Gopal was born in Delhi, India. The daughter of an Indian diplomat, she spent her childhood in India, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, and attended an international high school in Vienna, where her father served as a diplomat in the mid-1980s.[16][17] She is from a Brahmin family; she is a critic of the caste system.[18][19][20][21]

Education and career

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Gopal received a BA in English from the University of Delhi in 1989 and an MA in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1991. After finishing her studies in India, she moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies in English. She received an MA in English from Purdue University in 1993. She continued her postgraduate work at Cornell University, earning an MA in English in 1996 and a PhD in colonial and postcolonial literature in 2000.[3][22][23]

She began her teaching career as a graduate instructor in the Department of English at Cornell University in 1995. She joined Connecticut College in 1999 as an Assistant Professor of English leaving in 2000. She moved to the University of Cambridge in 2001, where she is professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Faculty of English and a teaching fellow at Churchill College.[3][22][24] She supervises and teaches in the areas of literary criticism, modern tragedy, 19th-century and modern British literature, and postcolonial and related literatures. Her primary interests are in colonial and postcolonial literatures, with related interests in British and American literatures, the novel, translation, gender and feminism, Marxism and critical theory, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation. From 2006 to 2010, she was Dean of Churchill College.[22]

Thought

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Empire

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Gopal has written extensively about the impact of empire on contemporary culture in Britain and examined its broader social and cultural effects in South Asia and other former colonial societies.[25][26][27] According to Gopal, her motivation to speak about issues of empire and colonialism started with a disagreement with historian Niall Ferguson about the British Empire, on a 2006 edition of BBC Radio 4's Start the Week.[28]

In her book Insurgent Empire, Gopal examines traditions of dissent on the question of empire and shows how rebellions and resistance in the colonies influenced British critics of empire in a process she calls "reverse tutelage".[29] She argues that ideas of freedom, justice, and common humanity had themselves taken shape in the struggle against imperialism.[30]

Gopal has also written about the historical amnesia surrounding empire and called for a more honest account of how Britain came to be what it is today. She argues that developing a demanding relationship to history is essential to understanding the formative and shaping nature of the imperial project on British life.[31][32]

Churchill, empire and race

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In October 2020, Churchill College set up a working group to critically examine Winston Churchill's views and actions relating to empire and race. The working group held two events: "Churchill, Empire and Race: Opening the Conversation" and "The Racial Consequences of Mr Churchill". The latter event took place on the 11th February 2021, chaired by Gopal.[33] It was subsequently criticised in the press after a speaker said that the British Empire was worse than the Nazis, and that Churchill was the "perfect embodiment of white supremacy".[34]

In June 2021, college Master Athene Donald ended the working group's role after a dispute between the College Council and the working party. In her statement, Donald stated that Gopal was frustrated over the Council's rejection of the Working Group's proposals for the third event. According to Donald, "the working group seems to have changed direction, with the second event not aligning with the initial proposals that council [the college’s trustee body] saw; nor did their suggestions for the third."[35] She said that Gopal consequently wrote that the group might as well dissolve themselves. Donald said that rightly or wrongly, she took that statement at face value and abruptly ended the role of the group.[36][37][38]

Gopal rejected the rationale given for the group's dissolution and said that the college had instead disbanded the group. She said that the disbanding was a way for the college to preempt the resignation of several members of the working group over the college pandering to the tabloid press and other groups. In her Twitter feed, Gopal accused the Daily Mail, Policy Exchange and the Churchill family of pressuring the college to discontinue the event, accusing university leaders of "taking fright" after the backlash.[38][37][35]

In July 2021, a group of members of the working group released a statement denying that they had disbanded themselves and accused the college of not following due process in ending its role. The group also accused the College Council of undermining academic freedom and bringing the college into disrepute.[39]

Race and Decolonising the Curriculum

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Gopal has been a long-standing advocate for 'decolonisation' of Cambridge’s English curriculum. In June 2017, a group of Cambridge students asked the university to include more black and ethnic minority writers in its English literature curriculum, an initiative strongly supported by Gopal.[40] She argues that decolonisation in the curriculum context is ‘about’ having access to information and narratives, which reframe our understanding of the multiple lineages and sources of knowledge.[41]

In the context of racial discrimination in the United Kingdom, Gopal has discussed white fragility, suggesting that a "way of deflecting engagement with race is to personalise matters".[42] In October 2019, Gopal criticised the Equality and Human Rights Commission report "Tackling racial harassment: Universities challenged" for its language and not addressing the systemic disadvantages faced by black and minority ethnic students or the ways whiteness dominates power structures and pedagogy.[43]

King's College racial profiling dispute

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In June 2018, Gopal alleged racial profiling by college porters at the gate of King's College, Cambridge. Gopal said that she was subjected to racial profiling and aggression by the porters and gatekeepers of King's and that porters frequently hassled non-white staff and students at the gates.[44][45] Gopal told a journalist from The Sunday Times it "was behaviour I very much doubt a white man of middle age who identified himself as a lecturer" would have faced.[46] Gopal announced that she would no longer teach at King's until there was a resolution to the problem.[47][48]

As a result of the attention the issue received, Cambridge University students came forward describing similar experiences. Students of English at King's also issued an open letter in support of Gopal, urging the college to offer her a "proper apology", and two other supervisors from the English department said they would refuse to teach at King's.[45] King's denied that Gopal had been subject to racial profiling, and claimed that the CCTV footage of the incident revealed no wrongdoing by staff.[45] Gopal said that she received hate mail following her announcement.[49]

In October 2018, King's issued a statement announcing that it would put in place a "clearer and simpler means of reporting incidents" and that it would review its procedures for handling complaints.[50] Gopal said senior college members also conveyed their private apologies and assured her that the college was taking the problem seriously. Shortly afterwards, Gopal rescinded her decision to withdraw her labour from the college.[16]

Daily Mail false allegations against Gopal

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In November 2020, the Daily Mail issued an apology and paid £25,000 in damages to Gopal after an opinion piece by Amanda Platell published in June 2020 falsely alleged that Gopal was "attempting to incite a race war and that she supported and endorsed the subjugation and persecution of white people" based on fake Twitter posts attributed to Gopal.[51][52][53][54]

Criticism of Tony Sewell, chair of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

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In March 2021, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, chaired by educational consultant Tony Sewell, released its report on race and ethnic disparities in the UK.[55] Gopal argued the report cherry-picked data and minimised and denied structural and institutional racism, asserting that it read like a propaganda document rather than a piece of research.[56] She also questioned whether Sewell had a doctorate. When she learned he did, Gopal tweeted: "Okay, established. It is, in fact, Dr Sewell. Fair enough. Even Dr Goebbels had a research PhD. (University of Heidelberg, 1921)". The comparison to Goebbels, a prominent Nazi, attracted criticism from commentators writing for The Times and The Daily Telegraph.[57][14][58][59] Gopal claimed that her remark was a reference to Goebbels, not a comparison.[56]

Anti-Semitism dispute

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In January 2022, Gopal tweeted that historian David Abulafia's description of fellow historian David Olusoga as 'eloquent' could sound dismissive, particularly when pertaining to writers of colour.[60][61] Abulafia told Varsity that he thought it was "insulting or possibly libellous" to infer that his remark had a racist overtone.[61]

Gopal claimed that the news editor of Varsity concocted the story about her supposed charge of 'racism' against Abulafia, claiming she had become a target because she had criticised the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.[13] She said that the news editor was among those who lobbied to adopt the definition in full.[13][62] She also said that one student journalist behind the story had "quite powerful familial connections to the liberal media", and that the criticism of her in the student newspaper Varsity was not "quite the little campus story ... that it is supposed to be".[62][63]

The Cambridge University Jewish Society and Abulafia, noting that Abulafia and the students were Jewish, condemned Gopal's remarks as evoking anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.[63][64] Gopal released a statement saying that Varsity had "published misleading and false claims" about her words that had subjected her to "a concerted racist and misogynist attack across the British right-wing press."[65]

Bibliography

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Books

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Articles

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  • "Of Victims and Vigilantes: The "Bandit Queen" Controversy". Thamyris Amsterdam. vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 73–102 (1997)[68]
  • "'Curious Ironies': Matter and Meaning in Bhabhani Bhattacharya's Novel of the 1943 Bengal Famine". ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 61–88 (2001)[69]
  • "Sex, space and modernity in the work of Rashid Jahan, "Angareywali"". Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies. pp. 150–166 (2002)[70]
  • "Reading subaltern history". The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. pp. 139–161 (2004)[71]
  • "The'Moral Empire': Africa, globalisation and the politics of conscience". New Formations. issue 59, pp. 81–98 (2006)[72]
  • "Concerning Maoism: Fanon, Revolutionary Violence, and Postcolonial India". South Atlantic Quarterly. vol. 112, no. 1, pp. 115–128 (2013)[73]
  • "Speaking with Difficulty: Feminism and Antiracism in Britain after 9/11". Feminist Studies. vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 98–118 (2013)[74]
  • "Redressing anti-imperial amnesia". Race & Class. vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 18–30 (2016)[75]
  • "Of Capitalism and Critique: 'Af-Pak' Fiction in the Wake of 9/11". South-Asian Fiction in English: Contemporary Transformations. pp. 21–36 (2016)[76]
  • "On Decolonisation and the University". Textual Practice. vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 873–899 (2021)[77]

References

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  1. ^ "Literature Tree - Priyamvada Gopal". academictree.org. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
  2. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada 1968-, WorldCat, retrieved 25 June 2020
  3. ^ a b c d "Professor Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge" (staff profile). Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. n.d. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  4. ^ Dasgupta, Piyasree (26 June 2018). "How This Indian-Origin Professor Is Calling Out Cambridge University's 'Racism'". HuffPost.
  5. ^ Taylor, Miles (11 July 2019). "Insurgent Empire by Priyamvada Gopal review – a superb study of anticolonial resistance". The Guardian.
  6. ^ The British Academy. "2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize". The British Academy.
  7. ^ Lodhia, Devarshi (12 April 2018). "Cambridge lecturer condemns Daily Mail over 'racist and sexist hatchet job'". Varsity.
  8. ^ Rawlinson, Kevin (25 June 2020). "'Abolish whiteness' academic calls for Cambridge support". The Guardian.
  9. ^ Woolcock, Nicola (11 February 2021). "Cambridge college named after Winston Churchill debates his 'backward' views on race". The Times.
  10. ^ Adams, Richard (18 June 2021). "Cambridge college ends critical examination of founder Winston Churchill". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
  11. ^ Shahvisi, Arianne (17 January 2022). "Beautiful Handwriting". London Review of Books.
  12. ^ Norris, Sian (20 April 2021). "'Most British Institutions Pander to the Mail's Blackmailing & Racism'". Byline Times.
  13. ^ a b c Harpin, Lee (14 January 2022). "Cambridge professor accused of 'conspiratorial attacks on Jewish students'". Jewish News. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  14. ^ a b Phillips, Trevor. "Silence of white establishment betrays Sewell". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  15. ^ "The world's top 50 thinkers 2021". Prospect. 13 July 2021. Retrieved 17 February 2022.
  16. ^ a b Manral, Kiran (7 November 2019). "Xenophobia Is Not Exclusively A Western Practice: Dr Priyamvada Gopal". SheThePeople.
  17. ^ Ross, Elliot (5 February 2020). "First rule of fight club: power concedes nothing without a struggle". The Correspondent.
  18. ^ Banerjee, Chandrima (13 July 2020). "'Many Indian trolls wrote me hate mails defending white supremacists'". The Times Of India.
  19. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (18 February 2018). "Response to Mary Beard". Medium. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
  20. ^ Pivhal, Navin (16 November 2019). "Decoding how rebellious colonies changed: British attitudes to empire". The Hans India.
  21. ^ Guéron-Gabrielle, Juliette (8 September 2020). "Professor Gopal: "The humanities gave me scope for youthful rebellion"". Varsity.
  22. ^ a b c "Professor Priyamvada Gopal, Churchill College" (staff profile). Churchill College, University of Cambridge. n.d. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  23. ^ Rahimi, Rosa (27 July 2020). "Professor Priyamvada Gopal: "There is such a thing as truth, and we are accountable to truth."". The Cambridge Journal of Political Affairs.
  24. ^ "Reports - Cambridge University Reporter 6586". www.admin.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
  25. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (28 June 2006). "The story peddled by imperial apologists is a poisonous fairytale". The Guardian.
  26. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2 April 2007). "It is contradictory to condemn slavery and yet celebrate the empire". The Guardian.
  27. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (6 July 2019). "Britain's story of empire is based on myth. We need to know the truth". The Guardian.
  28. ^ Reisz, Matthew (22 May 2019). "On the front line of Britain's imperial past". Times Higher Education.
  29. ^ Joseph, Tony (30 May 2020). "'Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent' review: Striking back at the Empire". The Hindu.
  30. ^ a b Gopal, Priyamvada (14 June 2019). Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. Verso. p. 624. ISBN 9781784784126.
  31. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (31 July 2012). "Mau Mau verdict: Britain must undo its imperial amnesia". The Guardian.
  32. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (18 January 2016). "Redressing anti-imperial amnesia". SAGE Journals. Vol. 57, no. 3. pp. 18–30. doi:10.1177/0306396815608127.
  33. ^ Goble, Georgia; Dorrell, Christopher. "Churchill College panel discusses the 'racial consequences' of Winston Churchill". Varsity. Retrieved 21 November 2024.
  34. ^ Woolcock, Nicola. "Cambridge college named after Winston Churchill debates his 'backward' views on race". The Times. Retrieved 21 November 2024.
  35. ^ a b Woolcock, Nicola (18 June 2021). "Cambridge college head 'suppressed disapproval of Churchill'". The Times. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
  36. ^ Donald, Athene (17 June 2021). "A Statement from the Master". www.chu.cam.ac.uk.
  37. ^ a b Haigh, Elizabeth; Howell, Amy (17 June 2021). "Churchill College disbands working group on Churchill, Race and Empire". Varsity. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
  38. ^ a b Adams, Richard. "Cambridge college ends critical examination of founder Winston Churchill". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
  39. ^ Walsh, Clare (2 July 2021). "Members of Churchill Race and Empire Working Group condemn college for disbanding the group". Varsity.
  40. ^ Kennedy, Maev (26 October 2017). "Cambridge academics seek to 'decolonise' English syllabus". The Guardian.
  41. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (28 October 2017). "Yes, we must decolonise: our teaching has to go beyond elite white men". The Guardian.
  42. ^ "If we can't call racism by its name, diversity will remain a meaningless buzzword". The Guardian. 8 October 2019.
  43. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada; Rollock, Nicola (24 October 2019). "'Monolithically white places': academics on racism in universities". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  44. ^ "King's College racism row: Students support academic". BBC News. 21 October 2018.
  45. ^ a b c Ferguson, Donna (23 June 2018). "I want to see Cambridge University breaking the silence on race". The Guardian.
  46. ^ Kinchen, Rosie (24 June 2018). "Twitter row doctor Priyamvada Gopal bites back at King's College, Cambridge". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  47. ^ Oppenheim, Maya (20 June 2018). "Cambridge academic says she will not work for university after accusing porters of racist abuse". The Independent.
  48. ^ Troup Buchanan, Rose (20 June 2018). "This Top Academic Is Refusing To Supervise Students At A Cambridge College, Citing Repeated Racial Profiling". BuzzFeed News.
  49. ^ Mirsky, Hannah (21 October 2018). "Meet Priyamvada Gopal - the academic fighting racism at Cambridge University". Cambridge News.
  50. ^ Proctor, Michael (16 October 2018). "Statement about entry through main Gates of King's College". www.kings.cam.ac.uk.
  51. ^ Waterson, Jim (13 November 2013). "Daily Mail pays £25,000 to professor it falsely accused of inciting race war". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  52. ^ Turner, Ben (25 June 2020). "Death threats sent to Cambridge University professor after 'white lives don't matter' tweet". Cambridgeshire Live.
  53. ^ Rawlinson, Kevin (25 June 2020). "'Abolish whiteness' academic calls for Cambridge support". The Guardian.
  54. ^ Huskisson, Sophie (25 June 2020). "Priyamvada Gopal promoted to Professorship, as online abuse continues". Varsity.
  55. ^ "Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities: The Report" (PDF). GOV.UK.
  56. ^ a b Nick de Bois (3 April 2021). "talkRADIO interview with Priyamvada Gopal". talkRADIO (Podcast). talkRADIO.
  57. ^ Syed, Matthew. "Pit my truth against your truth and it's a terrifying race to the bottom". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  58. ^ Robinson, Calvin (2 April 2021). "There is no excuse for the hypocritical Left's appalling campaign of abuse". Daily Telegraph.
  59. ^ Aaronovitch, David. "Philip Roth was right about our online witch-hunts". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  60. ^ Shahvisi, Arianne (17 January 2022). "Beautiful Handwriting". London Review of Books.
  61. ^ a b Jacob Freedland and Fergal Jeffreys, 'Caius historian slams "insulting" Gopal racism claim', Varsity (10 January 2022).
  62. ^ a b Kaplan, Josh (14 January 2022). "Cambridge professor accused of tweeting 'conspiratorial attacks' on Jewish student journalists". The Jewish Chronicle.
  63. ^ a b Harpin, Lee (14 January 2022). "Cambridge professor accused of 'conspiratorial attacks on Jewish students'". Jewish News. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  64. ^ Harpin, Lee (17 January 2022). "Cambridge prof accused of 'Jewish conspiracy trope' by leading historian". Jewish News. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  65. ^ Moss, Bethan (14 January 2022). "Jewish Society condemns Gopal's 'conspiracy theories and online intimidation'". Varsity.
  66. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (9 March 2005). Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence. Routledge. p. 192. ISBN 9780415655453.
  67. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (29 January 2009). The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 232. ISBN 9780199544370.
  68. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (1997). "Of Victims and Vigilantes: The "Bandit Queen" Controversy". Thamyris Amsterdam. 4 (1). Najade Press: 73–102.
  69. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2001). "'Curious Ironies': Matter and Meaning in Bhabhani Bhattacharya's Novel of the 1943 Bengal Famine". ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. 32 (3): 61–88.
  70. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2002). "Sex, space and modernity in the work of Rashid Jahan, "Angareywali"". Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies. Cultural Margins. Cambridge University Press: 150–166. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511483158.008. ISBN 9780521813679.
  71. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2004). "Reading subaltern history". The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. Cambridge University Press: 139–161. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521826942.008. ISBN 9780521534185.
  72. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2006). "The'Moral Empire': Africa, globalisation and the politics of conscience". New Formations (59). Lawrence & Wishart Ltd.: 81–98.
  73. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2013). "Concerning Maoism: Fanon, Revolutionary Violence, and Postcolonial India". South Atlantic Quarterly. 112 (1). Duke University Press: 115–128. doi:10.1215/00382876-1891278.
  74. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2013). "Speaking with Difficulty: Feminism and Antiracism in Britain after 9/11". Feminist Studies. 39 (1). Feminist Studies, Inc.: 98–118. doi:10.1353/fem.2013.0027. S2CID 245658599.
  75. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2016). "Redressing anti-imperial amnesia". Race & Class. 57 (3). SAGE Publications: 18–30. doi:10.1177/0306396815608127. S2CID 146938315.
  76. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2016). "Of Capitalism and Critique: 'Af-Pak' Fiction in the Wake of 9/11". South-Asian Fiction in English: Contemporary Transformations. Palgrave MacMillan: 21–36. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-40354-4_2. ISBN 978-1-137-40353-7.
  77. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2021). "On Decolonisation and the University". Textual Practice. 35 (6). Routledge: 873–899. doi:10.1080/0950236X.2021.1929561. S2CID 235636408.
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