Karuna Mantena

Karuna Mantena is Associate Professor of Political Science. She received her 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 taught courses on Indian politics, empire and political thought, postcolonial political thought, and History and Politics in the Directed Studies Program.  Her current research focuses on political realism and the political theory of M.K. Gandhi.  

Karuna Mantena is on leave for the academic year 2011-2012.

Some recent publications:
- “On Gandhi’s Critique of the State: Sources, Contexts, Conjunctures,” Modern Intellectual History (forthcoming).

- Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Princeton, 2010).

- "Genealogies of Catastrophe: Arendt on the Logic and Legacy of Imperialism," Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt, eds. Seyla Benhabib, Roy T. Tsao, and Peter Verovsek (Cambridge, 2010).

- “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).  [Also in histoire@politique n°11, Revue électronique du Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po (May-August, 2010)]

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

Campus address: 115 Prospect St., Rosenkranz Hall, Room 332
Phone: 432-6102
Email: karuna.mantena@yale.edu
Personal web page: http://karunamantena.wordpress.com/
For office hours, click here.