His publications included books and articles on novels, slavery, abolition, secularism, cosmopolitanism, globalization, climate change, and the anthropocene.
[4] In 2000, Aravamudan received the Modern Language Association's prestigious prize for an outstanding first book for the publication of Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688–1804 (Duke University Press, 1999).
[6] Aravamudan's second book, Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language (Princeton University Press, 2005; Penguin India, 2007), was similarly recognized for its expansive treatment of topics ranging from Romantic orientalism to Deepak Chopra,[7] as well as for its tracing of the complex circuits via which knowledge about South Asian religion was produced.
Aravamudan further challenged literary critics to move beyond the Anglocentrism of typical histories of the novel by uncovering a significant body of British and French orientalist texts and their borrowings from Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Pali, and Sanskrit sources.
[12] In addition to publishing the above books, Aravamudan edited a volume for the Pickering & Chatto series on Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period (1999).