Dr. Ajitpaul Mangat

Biography

Dr. Ajitpaul Mangat is a Faculty Fellow in the Department of English. Dr. Mangat’s teaching and research focus on the intersectionality of disability and race: he draws on his training in disability studies to study multiethnic literature.

Focus of Teaching

Dr. Mangat teaches a range of courses – from first year-writing (WRT10) and -literature (ENG110) to upper-level courses on American literature (ENG201) and literary methods (ENG260).

Dr. Mangat’s teaching centers on the body. When teaching, he gets students thinking and writing about how bodies are positioned within broader structures of ableism and racism. He teaches students how to critique dominant representations of bodily difference as well as how to accommodate various kinds of difference in their community and environment. Students leave his courses with the knowledge and understanding of how they can change the world around them for the better.

Current Research

Dr. Mangat’s research focuses on aesthetic and social forms of solidarity.

Dr. Mangat’s primary research examines literary representations of care. His book project, In and Against the Neoliberal Family: Socialized Care in the Illness Memoir, explores how illness memoirs – by writers ranging from Audre Lorde and Essex Hemphill to Eli Clare, Sarah Schulman, and Anne Boyer – represent the struggle to foster more expansive forms of socialized care during an era marked by the neoliberal privatization of care within the bounded family.

Dr. Mangat also researches the collaborations that have made rap music. His other book project, Indie Rap and the Spirit of Collaboration, explores how collaborations between rappers and indie rockers during a particular moment in popular music (2004-2014) gave rise to, what he refers to as, “indie rap.” This project is itself the product of Dr. Mangat’s collaborations with his students.

Dr. Mangat’s scholarship appears or is forthcoming in Explorations of Consciousness in Contemporary Fiction (Brill), Neurodiversity on Television (McFarland) and Care and Disability (Routledge) as well as Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal.

Current Involvement

Dr. Mangat’s teaching and research both closely align with his commitment to supporting and highlighting the voices of students, particularly those from marginalized communities.

Dr. Mangat serves as a Humanities Faculty Advisor for the Vincentian Social Justice Minor: he runs workshops for faculty on how to make their classrooms more accessible and their course content more diverse in terms of race and disability. He also actively participates in the Inclusive Excellence Initiative, the Accessibility and Disability Matters Committee, and the Women’s Studies Committee. Additionally, he is the faculty advisor of The Aquila (Niagara University’s literary and arts journal), and a member of the Rose Bente Lee Ostapenko Center for Ethics in Medicine and Healthcare.

He recently organized a symposium, “Care in Action,” that invited academics, students, and community members to discuss how to make the Niagara University campus more inclusive and accessible.

Educational Background

• 2009 University of Manitoba, B.Sc/B.A.
• 2011 University of Tennessee – Knoxville, M.A.
• 2020 University at Buffalo – SUNY, Ph.D.