Pramod K Nayar’s new book, Postcolonial Poetry and the Environment: Place, Precarity and Justice, from Bloomsbury, was launched at the Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad, on Nov ember 21, 2025.
Prof. Pramod K Nayar
The book was formally released by Dr Aalok Khandekar, Head, Department of Liberal Arts. This was followed by a short introduction to the work by Pramod K Nayar. Following this, Rashmi Singh, faculty in the Department of Liberal Arts, with a specialization in political ecology, gave a series of comments and observations on the arguments of the book interspersed with questions to the author which enabled him to further expand upon the book’s themes and concerns. Next Saradindu Bhattacharya of the Department of English, University of Hyderabad engaged in a Q & A with the author. The two interlocutors displayed remarkable attention to the book’s many themes and debates, as was apparent from the conversations between them and Nayar. Finally, with the floor opened to the audience, there was a lively discussion around the book but also wider themes such as environmentalism in the age of capital, the role of poetry and literature in general.
The event witnessed a full house, with faculty from the Department of Liberal Arts IITH, the Department of English, Hindi and Philosophy of UoH, administrative officers from UoH, faculty from Woxsen University, and researchers from IIT H.
This book is one of a series from Pramod Nayar dealing with interconnected themes of vulnerable lives, ecological precarity and Human Rights in literature and culture, all published in the last decade, including The Human Rights Graphic Novel, Bhopal’s Ecological Gothic, Human Rights and Literature, Ecoprecarity, Vulnerable Earth, among others.
Besides the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies at the University of Hyderabad, Nayar is also Distinguished Professor at the IIT H