This book chapter traces connections between Swami Vivekananda, John Henry Wright, and W.E.B. Du Bois by way of direct contacts as well as indirect intellectual influences. These encounters reveal valuable insights into how these three figures approached antiquity, philosophy, and religion. I examine Wright’s pivotal role in introducing Vivekananda to American audiences in the 1890s as well as his connections to Du Bois, who was a student at Harvard while Wright was a professor. Moreover, I suggest that Du Bois was familiar with circles that Vivekananda was acquainted with and took inspiration from Vivekananda’s thought, which also considerably impacted William James, Du Bois’ principal mentor at Harvard. By mapping these intersections, the chapter shows how multiple temporalities of antiquity, the search for truth, and the manifestation of divinity shaped this unexpected confluence.

“Global Receptions of the Rāmāyana.” Blog Series. Spurlock Museum of World Cultures, 2024

The Rāmāyaṇa has been received worldwide as a story that changes with time and place. Groups have adapted it to showcase their own cultures, beliefs, and artistic styles, making it one of the most retold stories in history.

“The Vālmīkī Rāmāyana: A Timeless Hindu Tale at the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures”. Blog Series, Spurlock Museum of World Cultures, 2024

This essay introduces readers to the ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the sage Vālmīkī, foregrounding its central narrative—Śrī Rāma’s quest to rescue Sītā from Rāvaṇa—and its philosophical core in dharma, the ethical duties that shape righteous living. It understands Rāma’s role as maryāda puruṣottama, the ideal human who models virtue through unwavering commitment to duty, even while recognized as an avatāra of Viṣṇu. Situating the epic within Hindu cosmology, it highlights its millennia‑long oral transmission, scriptural significance, and poetic innovation. Overall, the essay frames the Rāmāyana as both a foundational literary work and a moral text whose teachings on discipline, compassion, and truthfulness continue to resonate

“Widening Access to Global Literary and Cultural Canons.” Interview. Inquiry. Humanities Research Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2024

A short interview reflecting on strategies for broadening access to global literary and cultural canons through public humanities work, collaborative pedagogy, and community‑centered programming. The conversation highlights approaches to inclusive curriculum design, cross‑disciplinary engagement, and expanding the reach of world literature within and beyond the university.

“The Intertwined Reception of Homer and Shakespeare in Nicholas Rowe’s Ulysses.” Shakespeare Seminar Online, 2022.

This article examines the simultaneous reception of Homer’s Odyssey and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida in Nicholas Rowe’s Augustan tragicomedy, Ulysses. It examines how the political tensions between Whig and Tory factions surrounding the Act of Union shape Rowe’s interpretation of the Trojan War and transhistorical comparison of ancient Greece and Britain. The overlayering of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, which approaches the Trojan War through a seventeenth-century political lens, classicizes vernacular English drama while buttressing the canonization of the Odyssey in the early eighteenth century.

“Connecting to the Ancient Greeks through Medicine, Sociology, Literature and Philosophy: W.E.B. Du Bois.” Interview. Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities Blog, 2021.

The conversation highlights Du Bois’s use of classical antiquity not as a distant heritage but as a living intellectual resource, one he reinterpreted through African-American history, justice-based social science, and geopolitical critique. The interview presents a public humanities program, made possible by a grant from the Society of Classical Studies, based on a community-based reading of Du Bois’ first published novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece. It signals the importance of the novel’s narrative architecture, particularly Du Bois’ reframing of the ancient Greek myth of Jason, Medea, and the Golden Fleece as an incisive political allegory of sharecropping and segregation in post-bellum United States.