Annu is a 7th year PhD Candidate in The Program in Literature at Duke University. She completed her undergraduate training at Rutgers University—New Brunswick in women’s and gender studies, cultural anthropology, critical and comparative race and ethnic studies, and biology. Her undergraduate honors thesis, entitled The Viral Origins of Life, won the Dorothy Hamilton Award for Outstanding Research.

Annu is currently finishing her dissertation, The Conditions of Emergence: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of the Origins of Life, under the supervision of Elizabeth Grosz and Mark B.N. Hansen.

To further strengthen her doctoral training at Duke, she is also pursuing graduate certificates in feminist studies, the history and philosophy of science, and college teaching. Annu is currently a history + philosophy of science research intern at The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh (the most visited museum in North Carolina and the largest science museum in the Southeast United States) where she is experimenting with public pedagogy rooted in feminist philosophy of science.

At Duke, Annu has taught several small, intensive undergraduate seminars that weave together the history of biology, feminist theory, and continental philosophy at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced intermediate levels. She looks forward to one day teaching graduate seminars on a variety of topics rooted in feminist, queer, trans, and anti-racist thought.

Annu has presented her work and organized panels in national and international venues, including The Society for Existential and Speculative Philosophy, philoSOPHIA: A Society for Continental Feminism, The International Association for Environmental Philosophy, The North American and European Societies for Science, Literature, and the Arts, The National Women's Studies Association, and The Irigaray Circle.

During the 2018-2019 academic year, Annu was a Dissertation Fellow in The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. She will be a Bass Teaching Fellow (awarded through The Graduate School) in 2019-2020, during which she will continue to hone the various pedagogical methods she uses to train students how to think.

Research and Teaching Areas of Expertise

Feminist Theory • Queer and Feminist Science and Technology Studies • Feminist New Materialism • Biophilosophy • Continental Philosophy of Science • Cultural Studies [particularly American Studies]• Literature and Science

External Training

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences—Raleigh, North Carolina, Summer 2019
History and Philosophy of Science Research Internship

Cardiff University—Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, May 2018
sciencehumanities International Summer School

Publications

“Splice: The Metamorphosis of Sex as Transgenic Horror.” (article submitted for initial review)

“The Conditions of Emergence: Irigaray, Primordial Wombs, and The Origins of Cellular Life.” In A Sharing of Thought and Speech: Scholarship on or Inspired by the Work of Luce Irigaray, edited by Ruthanne Crapo Kim, Yvette Russell, and Brenda Sharp. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, Forthcoming 2020

“Before the Cell, there was Virus: Rethinking the Concept of Parasite and Contagion through Contemporary Research in Evolutionary Virology.” In Transforming Contagion: Anxieties, Modalities, Possibilities, edited by Breanne Fahs, Annika Mann, Eric Swank, and Sarah Stage, 42-55. New Brunswick, NJ:Rutgers University Press, 2018

Courses Previously Taught at Duke (self-designed undergraduate courses)

Monstrosity, Science, Culture, Program in Literature (cross-listed with Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Visual and Media Studies, & English), Summer 2018

Contagion in Culture and Society, Program in Literature (cross-listed with Global Health, Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Visual and Media Studies, Science and Technology Studies, & English), Summer 2017

Gender and Everyday Life, Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (cross-listed with Program in Literature), Spring 2017

Non/Human Reproduction, Program in Literature (cross-listed with Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, & Cultural Anthropology), Fall 2016