My research interests broadly cover an interdisciplinary approach towards performance, body, space and text. My doctoral thesis titled Border Narratives of Women in India and Latin America: Re-inventing Selves, Re-creating Spaces (1980 – 2016) focuses on contemporary border experiences, marginalities and gender identities as represented in scholarly/poetic/performative explorations. This research led to participants of my interview come together to co-create an international performance based on different modes of storytelling by artist-scholars from across five countries (including me). The process of analysis of this performance forms a substantial part of my thesis. I have also been designing research-based performances with artist-researchers and university students that focus on inter-cultural and cross-cultural transactions in the realm of performance. I explore the location of literary text on stage and the visuality of the body as narrative when it intervenes into the textual narrative to create a performance. Recently I am working at the interface of literary studies and performance studies trying to evolve methodologies that help find overlaps between teaching/research and the practice of Performing Arts.
B.A Comparative Literaure ( Jadavpur University, 2007)
M.A Comparative Literature ( Gold Medalist,Jadavpur University, 2009)
Submitted PhD Comparative Litearure ( Jadavpur University,2017)
I submitted my doctoral thesis in 2017, which focuses on cultural resources including oral narratives of women to understand subjectivities and lived realities of border cultures. In 2017, I was invited to Cornell University as an artist-researcher to develop a community based international border performance, as part of my research work, that was presented in Ithaca ,New York and the international borders of U.S- Mexico and U.S- Canada. I was invited to the University of Texas, El Paso in 2017 to teach on South Asian border experiences. I taught at the Under-graduate and Post-graduate levels in the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University in the capacity of UGC –NET Research Scholar since May, 2012. I have been an intructor at 'Bodies at the Borders' , a collaborative video-conferencing course between Jadavpur University and Cornell University. My current work is based on inter-cultural and cross-cultural transactions in performance developed in collaboration with the Department of Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University.
My doctoral thesis titled 'Border Narratives of Women in India and Latin America: Re-inventing Selves, Re-creating Spaces (1980 – 2016)' is based on a comparative study of border narratives and experiences of women across India and Latin America. It focuses on contemporary border experiences, marginalities and gender identities as represented in scholarly/poetic/performative explorations. I co-created a community based international border performance , Root Map as part of my Doctoral research.
One of my research project delves into 'gesture as narrative' in the classical idiom of Bharatnatyam in relation to modernity.
I undertook a GIAN course on research in oral history titled Oral History and the Art of Listening, taught by Professor Alessandro Portelli.
I received a special grant from UGC to work as a research associate on the Androgynous Element in Kirtana as Performance under its scheme of ‘Innovative Projects on Oral narratives’, 2011.
Currently , I am co-editing an international publication focusing on cultural productions informed by borders in South Asian and Latin American context.
I have been the designer and joint-co-ordinator of a series of international workshop on Performance Studies titled Circles, Masks, Movement, facilitated by Theatre and Performance Studies experts from India and abroad, organized by the Center for Advanced Study( CAS), Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University in January , 2017. I have also worked as Joint Coordinator of the International seminars organized by CSLALC, Jadavpur University in 2015, 2016 & 2017.
My training and engagement with the Indian aesthetics of dance/theatre and my academic orientation in Literature and Other Arts build into my keen interest and theoretical expertise with which I explore the relationship between Performing Arts and Literature. In my teaching , I focus on the possibilities of performance as lived individual-collective experience and the kind of kinesthetic that could be developed as interpretative tools to use body as a medium in Performing Arts. Broadly, I teach some of the components of theatre and dance in the courses offered by the Department of Performing Arts
I have been an intructor at 'Bodies at the Borders' , a collaborative video-conferencing course between Jadavpur University and Cornell University. I have taught at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the Department of Comparartive Literature, Jadavpur University for the last five years in the capacity of UGC-SRF.
‘Bordered Subjectivities and Emerging Modes of Resistance in Women’s Narratives of Sexual-Political Violence’ in Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature, Vol 58 ( ISSN :0481143), 2017
‘Thinking of Indian ‘Modernity’: A meeting point of Rabindra-Nritya and the classical idiom of Bharatnatyam’ in Following Forkhead Paths : Discussions on the Narrative . Setu Prakashani:Kolkata ( ISBN 978 93 80677 93 4).2018
‘Srijonshilawtai Protirodher bhasha’ in Bitorkika . August issue (ISSN :2321 -855X). 2016
‘How to ‘Do’ Comparative Literature: Answers Claudio Guillen in The Challenge of Comparative Literature’ in Sahitya, the journal of Comparative Literature Association of India. (ISSN 2249 -6416). 2015
‘Ranna-bati Khela’ , A translation of Rosario Castellanos’ short story ‘Cooking Lessons’ in Anubad Patrika, February 2013 issue
‘The Mist in Maria Luisa Bombal’s Works : Creating Fantasy Transforming Reality’ published in La Cultura Hispanica, May : Fourth issue. 2010
‘Freedom in the Play of the Self and the Other: Reading Rosario Castellanos’s Poems’ in La Cultura Hispanica, February : Second issue . 2009
Presidency University Students Corner