Aliya Ram is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities, as well as a certificate student in African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her work explores the relationships between aesthetic innovation, subject formation and coercive social bonds. She is interested in the figures and forms that emerged out of English and French colonialism, and works with literatures in English, Hindi and French. She also reads Chinese and Spanish. Before starting graduate school, Aliya worked as a journalist with the Financial Times for five years. She is also a writer.