I study the literature and culture of the British Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows and an Assistant Professor in English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. I received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida in 2023.

I am currently writing my first book, Edible Empire, which examines culinary and alimentary discourses in colonial South Asia. It focuses on the relationship between foodways, literary genres, and colonial epistemes of caste and race, with particular attention to questions of taste, consumption, and reading. I am also working on my next project which looks at the imperial formations of ecological disciplines.

My work has appeared or is forthcoming in ELH, Victorian Literature and Culture, Victorian Studies, Victorian Review, Global Food History, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, and Victoriographies.

I welcome research, pedagogical, and community collaborations. The best way to reach me is through email: msapui@umich.edu.

My preferred pronouns are she/her.