Monika Gehlawat

Monika Gehlawat is Associate Director of the School of Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi where she teaches courses on contemporary and world literature, critical theory, and visual art. She is most recent recipient of the Moorman Distinguished Professorship which she will hold from 2023-2025. Her book In Defense of Dialogue (Routledge 2020) reads the work of Frank O'Hara, James Baldwin, Grace Paley, and Andy Warhol alongside Jurgen Habermas' theory of communicative action. She has also published essays in Post 45: Peer-Reviewed, The James Baldwin Review, Contemporary Literature, and Literary Imagination, among other citations. She serves as Critic for the Center for Writers and Series Editor for Literary Conversations which is published by University of Mississippi Press. Her current book project, tentatively titled Triptych, focuses on ekphrastic novels by twenty-first century American writers including Teju Cole, Siri Hustvedt, and Ben Lerner.