A poetics tuned
to sound:
Reading modernism by ear.
I work at the meeting point of poetry and music — reading twentieth-century verse, with Marianne Moore at its center, through the avant-garde and the philosophy of sound. I am also interested in the study of postcolonial theory, posthumanism, and comparative literature.
I am a PhD candidate (ABD) in English Literature at The University of Alabama, expected to graduate in May 2027. My scholarship centers on modernist poetry and poetics — most closely the work of Marianne Moore — and extends to the avant-garde, the relationship between poetry and music, Victorian temporalities, and postcolonial, posthumanist, and comparative frameworks across global Anglophone literature.
Alongside my research, I am a dedicated teacher and mentor. I have guided more than 150 students in composition and literature, designing curricula that foreground critical thinking, close reading, and cultural competence across diverse literary traditions.
Recent Research Highlights
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"Impact and Exactitude": Musical Intentions in Marianne Moore's Poetics
My dissertation argues that Marianne Moore's poetry is not only "logopoeic" — Ezra Pound's term for verse of intellectual precision and wit — but also richly "melopoeic": alert to sound, rhythm, and auditory texture. Against a critical tradition (Stapleton, Costello, Leavell) that reads Moore as an essentially visual, spatial poet, I recover the musicality of her syllabic verse, where meaning is bound as much to sound as to sense.
Reading Moore alongside modernist music and the philosophy of music — Kant and Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Cage, and Ives; and theories of sound perception in Scruton, Hamilton, and Adorno — the project traces the three dualisms that organize her musical aesthetics: natural versus artefactual sound, austere versus flamboyant music, and spatial versus temporal form.
Establishes the philosophical and aesthetic framework for music's contested place among the arts — from Kant's and Hegel's distrust of music as the mere "beautiful play of sensations" to Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's claims for it as the deepest art. It introduces the three dualisms that structure the dissertation: natural versus artefactual sound, austere versus flamboyant music, and spatial versus temporal form.
Where Chapter I asked where music ranks among the arts, this chapter narrows to the mechanism of hearing itself — how an organized sound comes to mean — and makes the act of attention Moore's true subject. Taking up the first dualism, natural versus artefactual sound, it shows how noises with plain causes — a frog, a storm crossing a salt marsh, a bird feeding its young — can be heard apart from their sources as shaped, rhythmic events and then heard again as what they are: a double demand on the ear. Moore's test, drawn from her 1927 review of Copland's "Serenade," is one of propriety — a made sound earns its place only when it declares its making rather than counterfeiting nature ("music not chaos"), fulfilling Pater's ideal of sound fused with sense while refusing sentimental excess. The argument moves through Hanslick's formalism, Scruton's acoustic intentionality, Hamilton's acousmatic double intentionality, and Schaeffer's objet sonore — with Adorno's socio-historical critique as corrective — before close readings of "The Plumet Basilisk," "The Steeple-Jack," and "Bird-Witted."
Beginning from Chapter II's discovery that Moore's harshest sounds fall almost only where a creature, a town, or a stretch of land lies open to harm — the storm's "whirlwind fife-and-drum," the basilisk's night-orchestra, the mockingbird's flute-sounds cut short by a cat — this chapter asks why she places and rations dissonance so strictly. Its answer is propriety: Moore's own term, glossed in her late poem as "a tuned reticence with rigor / from strength at the source" and "Bach's cheerful firmness / in a minor key," which makes dissonance an instrument of conscience, sounded only while the poem's world is under strain. This is the second dualism — austere versus flamboyant music — where the flamboyant, Romantic conception treats sound as a vehicle for affective intensity and risks sentimentality, while Moore's austere conception treats it as a structured, intellectual act of composition, preferring the poem that "comes to a close" over the one that culminates "in a crescendo." Schooled on the contrapuntists — Bach, Handel, Brahms, Scarlatti — and read alongside Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Ives, her rationed dissonances become the audible signature of an order that registers real danger without inflating it.
Turns to the third dualism — spatial versus temporal — challenging the consensus that Moore's poetics are purely painterly. Through "The Jerboa," "Propriety," and others, and alongside Cubism, Hugh Kenner, Fiona Green, and James Longenbach, it argues that rhyme, meter, and rhythmic variation give her syllabic verse a temporal, musical dynamism in which "precision is both impact and exactitude."
The Marianne Moore Archives — The Rosenbach, Philadelphia
In April 2026 I travelled to the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia to conduct archival research for the dissertation. There, in the recreated rooms of Moore's Greenwich Village living room and among her papers, I studied her poems and drafts, her newspaper clippings, and her personal library — tracing everything she knew and read on the aesthetics and philosophy of music.
Reading modernism and empire on site
Site visits in Dublin extended two strands of my research: the postcolonial and comparative work — at Trinity College Dublin and the National Gallery of Ireland — and the study of modernism and music, at the James Joyce Centre.
On my research
Professor Steven Trout and Professor Heather White wrote these letters in support of my candidacy for the Outstanding Research by a PhD Student award, which I was honored to win.
Amrita was a student in my Spring 2023 graduate seminar on ‘Modernism, Place, and Gender' in the writings of Willa Cather. The students in that seminar were outstanding — among the finest I have encountered in my 30-year career — and Amrita was, in my estimation, the best of the bunch. From the very first day of class, she offered sensitive, well-articulated close readings and displayed a deep knowledge of American, British, and World literature. Her abilities, as a student of American literature and cultural history, are simply off the chart.
Her seminar paper, a groundbreaking analysis of the theme of ‘ennui' in Cather's A Lost Lady, was superb. She made all the scholarly moves one would expect of a far more experienced academic author. I know of no published work of scholarship that has approached A Lost Lady in this way. Over my career I have worked with hundreds of graduate students at three different institutions; fewer than ten of those students have Amrita's level of ability. I could not support her candidacy with greater enthusiasm.
This is a letter of strong support for Amrita Bakshi. I will be the supervisor of Amrita's dissertation when she begins work on it next fall. All of my experience of her work is of a born researcher. She arrived at graduate school a lucid, informed writer about literature, and she has evolved rapidly into a skillful and probing researcher. She has a sure feel for assessing the contours of a critical conversation and entering it productively.
Amrita is ambitious in the best sense of the word. She is industrious, focused, curious, and creative. She sets challenging timetables for herself and stays on them. Her first question about every piece of writing she does is, as it ought to be, how to bring it to a professional standard. She is right now the student one longs to have, and soon enough will be the colleague one dreams of.
Teaching & mentoring
I approach the classroom as a space for critical thinking and cultural competence. Across five years as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at The University of Alabama, I have designed syllabi, led discussion, and mentored more than 150 students — teaching them to read closely, argue in writing, and engage seriously with literatures beyond the Eurocentric canon.
Teaching the process, not the product.
When I first began my teaching journey here at the University of Alabama, I was quite scared to teach classrooms full of foreign teenagers. I became ever so conscious of my ethnic and cultural identity as an international student from India. So, when I started teaching EN 101 in August of 2022, my teaching philosophy was about survival. However, I decided to use my personal cultural experience in my classroom, and I assigned diverse and inclusive texts like Yarn: An Interwoven Memoir by Pragya Bhagat, So Now You Know: Growing Up Gay in India by Vivek Tejuja, and Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah. To my surprise, my students responded with great respect and genuine interest to my selected readings. Those readings sparked thoughtful and timely discussions about immigration, sexuality, and racial politics in the classroom, and I was thoroughly impressed by the brilliant, kind, and nuanced opinions from my students on these critical and even controversial topics. I felt I was succeeding at one of my primary goals: teaching my students how to think critically.
As a newly anointed teacher, even after building an initial good rapport with my students, I did face my fair share of challenges — mainly how to keep students engaged and motivated throughout the semester. To encourage more involvement, the first thing I started doing (and continue to do — it has become a teacherly habit by now) was individual check-ins, both on a personal and an academic level. We open class with a form of icebreaker, or “pass the mic” session, where each of my students shares where they are emotionally at the start of class. I have figured out that checking in does not have to be the most innovative of activities; it just needs to be genuine. I try to truly and deeply listen and engage in meaningful, sincere conversations. Deep listening helped create a welcoming environment where all my students felt empowered and comfortable to express themselves freely. This human approach, rather than a strictly teacherly one, helped me build easy and empathetic connections with my students — perhaps the most important of my teaching goals.
The academic check-in proved even more effective, because it highlighted the need to shift to a more process-oriented approach. These moments, during class time when my students are on task, helped me realise that both teaching and learning happen in direct, individual interactions. To hold the end-product — the papers students write — as the ultimate proof of learning is to deny the whole teaching-learning process itself. This realisation made me alter my lesson plans to include as much in-class working time as possible, which brought a marked improvement in engagement and a healthier, freer dialogue between me and my students. Focusing on the process instead of the product is, at this moment — when teaching itself is under the threat of an AI takeover — ever so necessary.
I now recognise that my role as a teacher is to teach my students how to think critically first, and then how to express those thoughts in a relevant medium or form. While AI tools like ChatGPT can probably write a paper in whatever form students require, it cannot yet become a surrogate thinker for them. Focusing on the process of thinking and writing, rather than on the final written artefact, will create both better writers and better thinkers. This is exactly what I aim to do in my classroom — by promoting diverse and inclusive pedagogy, teaching with empathy, and underscoring the central importance of the Process in all my teaching.
Official end-of-term course-evaluation summaries from my students at The University of Alabama.
In their own words
Amrita is undeniably one of the most compassionate professors I've had the pleasure of encountering. Her lectures were not just informative but also highly entertaining, often accompanied by engaging activities that made the learning process enjoyable. I had selected a controversial topic and was quite nervous, but from the very moment I shared it, she offered unwavering support and comfort — from the inception of my research until the completion of my project. Being a part of Amrita's EN 102 class brought me immense joy.
Although this class was at 8am, I never wanted to miss a day. Ms. Bakshi was extremely attentive and excited to teach — she made the class atmosphere better than any other class I've ever taken. She made every student feel seen and heard, made long reading assignments fun, and explained each assignment in full detail. I learned so many valuable skills that will help me in my future professional life. For it being her first year of teaching, I would have guessed she had been teaching for at least 5 years.
I was so blessed to have Amrita as my EN 101 and EN 102 teacher. She made it very clear that she not only cared about our work and success, but also about us as people. She would assign us to a person in the class we had never interacted with before — she understands how important building a network is. She was always ready and willing to help: any email was responded to in less than 10 minutes, and she held one-on-one conferences over every single one of our essays. Amrita has been one of the best instructors I've had because of her unique teaching style, dedication to her students, and her never-ending love for learning.
You took time out to learn everyone's name and pronounce it correctly — you have real pride and patience for your job. I commend you also for being a student here yourself and teaching at the same time. Please never change your style of teaching.
I have learned and evolved a mass amount in my writing capability, research skills, and organization practices since the first day of class. She was willing to re-explain something we had already gone over, outside of class hours and while busy tending to her own priorities. Her act of benevolence was very impactful and greatly appreciated.
From the Director of First-Year Writing
I can state unequivocally that Amrita's teaching places her among the top 10% of the 300 GTAs I have supervised over the last eight years. When I observed Amrita teach, I found that in many respects she worked like a veteran. She encouraged reflection, monitored her students' progress, offered individualized coaching when needed, and held her students accountable. She maintained a calm, caring classroom environment, calling on students by name, listening closely to their contributions, and providing encouragement and constructive criticism. Every student in her classes felt seen; every student knew that they mattered.
Amrita's students responded in kind, noting on their SOIs that she was “understanding,” “accommodating,” and “accessible.” It's no surprise that her course and instructor ratings range from 4.6–4.89, well above department, college, and university means. Amrita has a keen sense of professional humility — she distinguished herself as an active student of her own teaching. Nothing was too small for her to question: seating arrangements, absent students, grading. For Amrita, the classroom is a perpetually rich and re-readable text. The best teachers understand this. I therefore give Amrita Bakshi my highest recommendation.
A year on the circuit — presenting my research, sitting on panels, and moderating conversations across three countries.
Get in touch
I welcome conversations about research, teaching, and collaboration — and inquiries from search committees. The fastest way to reach me is email.
