B. Venkat Mani, Professor of German and World Literatures at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has been awarded the Humboldt Research Prize/Reimar Lüst Prize for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. Endowed with 60,000 euros, the award recognizes Mani’s outstanding achievements in research and teaching. Mani’s research, which focuses on literary cosmopolitanism in post-colonial Europe, migrants and refugees, as well as on the history of books and libraries in the field of print and digital culture, is considered to be pioneering work.
Mani studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, and received his doctorate from Stanford University in the United States. He has been teaching at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 2001. Mani is part of the International Division as faculty affiliate of the DAAD Center for German and European Studies, Center for South Asia, and the Institute for Regional and International Studies.
“This award means for me a major recognition of scholarship and teaching of literatures of migrants and refugees, but also as an inspiration to continue to cross disciplinary borders,” said Mani. “I am grateful to the excellent undergraduates and graduate students at UW–Madison, and scholars and mentors with whom I have had the honor of working. I thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and DLA Marbach, and the spirit of international education in UW–Madison’s International Division.”
Mani’s outstanding research focuses on the critical assessment of cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, and globalization in the context of post-colonial Europe and South Asia, as well as the construction of world literature and the migration of books from the 19th century to the present. His highly acclaimed publications include monographs such as Recoding World Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany’s Pact with Books (2017; winner of the DAAD Prize of the German Studies Association and the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Award of the Modern Language Association for the best book in German studies 2018) and Cosmopolitical Claims: Turkish-German Literatures from Nadolny to Pamuk (2007).
Plans for 2024 include the essay collection “Options for Teaching German Literature for the 21st Century,” edited with David D. Kim (UCLA), and a special volume on world literature. His work on ethnic and religious minorities with a focus on migration has appeared in many international journals, including the Journal of World Literature, German Quarterly, Gegenwartsliteratur, and The Wire (Hindi).
Mani serves on the board of the German Studies Association and as second vice president of the American Comparative Literature Association. He was also recently appointed on the Expert Committee of the German Research Foundation’s Excellence Strategy.
At UW–Madison, Mani has mentored graduate students from several disciplines in humanities and social sciences and teaches the popular undergraduate course, “Global Migrants and Refugees” for the International Studies Major.
The Humboldt Research Award will enable Mani to conduct a research stay in Germany beginning in 2025. He will devote himself to archival research for his current book project, Tales of Unsettlement: The Global Novel in the Age of Refugees.