. Author of Subject to Colonialism: African Self-fashioning and the Colonial Library (Duke University Press, 2001) and Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India and the Afrasian Imagination( Columbia University Press, 2013). Professor Desai is also editor of Teaching the African Novel (MLA, 2009), has guest edited a volume of essays on “Culture and the Law” (South Atlantic Quarterly, 100.4, 2001), on "Actually Existing Colonialisms" (Journal of Contemporary Thought, 24, 2006), on “Asian African Literatures” (Research in African Literatures, 42.3, 2011), and co-edited a volume of essays on “Multi-Ethnic Literatures and the Idea of Social Justice” (MELUS, 28.1, Spring 2003). Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism (Rutgers University Press, 2005) which he co-edited with Supriya Nair has become a standard reference and classroom text since its publication