Florian Stadtler

My main research interests lie in colonial and postcolonial literatures and film, especially South Asian writing in English and the work of Salman Rushdie, British South Asian history, literature and film, Indian popular cinema and its representation in South Asian fiction. More broadly I am interested in twentieth-century and contemporary literatures and the development of the novel.

My monograph, Fiction, Film and Indian Popular Cinema: Salman Rushdie's novels and the Cinematic Imagination highlights the way in which Rushdie draws on the conventions, style and politics of Indian Popular Cinema in his exploration of the postcolonial subcontinent and the South Asian diaspora in fast-changing economic, social and global contexts.

I have also published extensively on South Asian British history, including the case of Udham Singh, Aubrey Menen, South Asian soldiers in the First and Second World Wars, and South Asian seafarers. I have edited special issues for Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing - India in Britain: Cross-Cultural Encounters, which highlights the vibrant South Asian publishing culture of 1930s-40s Britain; and a special issue on Writing Hong Kong (co-edited with Jeffrey Mather).

I have completed the editing of a major new collection of essays for Cambridge University Press, Salman Rushdie in Context which is published in April 2023.

Historically invested, my research draws extensively on archival collections in Britain, India and the USA.