Karuna Mantena

Karuna Mantena is Assistant Professor of Political Science. She received a PhD from Harvard University in 2004 and has previously taught at Cornell University. Her research interests include modern political thought, modern social theory, the intellectual history of empire, the theory and history of imperialism, South Asian politics and history, and theories of race and culture. She has recently taught courses on Indian politics, empire and political thought, postcolonial political thought, and History and Politics in the Directed Studies Program. She will be offering a new seminar in Spring 2010 on ‘Liberalism and the Politics of Empire.’ She has just completed her first book entitled Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Origins of Indirect Rule (Princeton, forthcoming).

Professor Mantena is currently on sabbatical leave until December 2009.

List of Recent Publications:

Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Origins of Indirect Rule (Princeton, forthcoming).

“Social theory in the Age of Empire,” Modern Political Theory and Empire, ed. Sankar Muthu (Cambridge, forthcoming).

“The Crisis of Liberal Imperialism,” Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Ideas in Context), ed. by DSA Bell (Cambridge, 2007).

“Mill and the Imperial Predicament,” J. S. Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, eds. Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras (Cambridge, February 2007).

“Fragile Universals and the Politics of Empire,” Polity 38: 4 (October 2006).

“Law and ‘Tradition’: Henry Maine and the Theoretical Origins of Indirect Rule,” Law and History, eds. Andrew Lewis and Michael Lobban (Oxford, 2004).

Campus address: 115 Prospect St., Rosenkranz Hall, Room 332
Phone: 432-6102
Email: karuna.mantena@yale.edu