Pramod K Nayar teaches at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India. His work in postcolonial studies includes English Writing and India, 1600–1920:Colonizing Aesthetics (2008), Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction (2008), The Great Uprising: India, 1857 (2007), The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar (2007) and The Penguin 1857 Reader (2007). His interests in cultural studies include superheroes, consumer culture, ‘cool’, posthumanism and new media cultures, and his work here includes An Introduction to Cultural Studies (2008), Reading Culture: Theory, Praxis, Politics (2006), Virtual Worlds: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cybertechnology (2004), and a book on literary and cultural theory (Literary Theory Today, 2002), besides numerous essays on cyberculture and, more recently, on human rights narratives. Among forthcoming books are a study of new media and cyberculture, postcolonialism, a history of the Raj and an edited collection on English life in India.