Assistant Professor
English Department
St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
319 DaSilva Hall
Staten Island campus
718.390.4078
outarl@stjohns.edu
Educational Background
B.A., 1995, Princeton University, cum laude, English
Literature
M.A., 2002, The University of Chicago, English Language and
Literature
Ph.D., 2007, The University of Chicago, English Language and
Literature
Profile
Lisa Outar joined the English Department faculty in 2006 and
specializes in Caribbean literature and postcolonial theory. At St.
John’s, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in those
areas as well as in postcolonial literature, Indian and Indian
diaspora literature, literary theory, autobiography, travel
literature, ethnic American literature and contemporary fiction.
Her current book project examines the place of Indianness in
creolization discourses in the Anglophone and Francophone
Caribbean. Her research takes up the larger question of the
role of literature and popular cultural forms in both responding
to, and helping to produce, ideas of nation. She has
published work on the Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul, on
issues in Francophone Caribbean literature and on links between the
Caribbean and India.