Saumya Lal is an Assistant Professor of English at the Louisiana State University. Her research and teaching interests include global Anglophone literatures and cultures, postcolonial studies, affect studies, literary ethics, and peace and conflict studies. She is currently working on a book project that examines the workings of empathy in literary portrayals of political conflicts in postcolonial Africa and South Asia. Her work has been published in The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, and Textual Practice.