Presidency University

In the summer of 2003(August), on the eve of the 25th anniversary of his path-breaking book Orientalism (1978), Edward Said published the article “Worldly Humanism Vs Empire Builder.” In this, one of his last pieces of scholarship, a deeply self-reflexive Said mentions how today the often-fashionable homage to the idea of western and eastern literary, cultural, social, and political syncretism is not enough. He calls on current teachers and scholars of the humanities to not only to make the dependence and continued exchanges between eastern and western cultures clear, but also “to widen the field of discussion.” As a product of both the Orient and the Occident, having been reared in the academic circles of both, I find myself answering Said’s call in both my research interests and projects and the courses that I have designed to teach. I am a Victorianist-Modernist by training and a passionate Humanist by conviction.

Over the years, in my research interests and publications, I “widen(ed) the field of discussion” by juxtaposing and analyzing different literary genres and by recovering, largely through archival research, forgotten texts by women authors. I have specialised in Victorian and Modernist Novels, Periodicals, and Travel Literatures and in the Postcolonial Anglophone traditions. Feminist, postcolonial, and subaltern theories are the terministic screens through which I critique the cultural and literary texts. My literary research contends that Victorian constructions of the female subject are integral to understanding and re-evaluating the culture of exchange between Britain and India during the Victorian and Modernist period. My research serves as both a prequel and a sequel to scholars, such as, Priya Joshi. The dual roles of being a feminist literary historian and analyst help me work both “within” and “without” the literary and cultural texts. Through my archival research I look “without” as I help expand the scope of the literary tradition, while through close textual analysis I look “within” to interpret the complex messages enshrined in these texts. My textual analysis can be termed as a feminist “reading against the grain.” However, I passionately defend the assertion that a “ ‘reading against the grain’ must forever remain strategic, it can never claim to have established the authoritative truth of a text, it must forever remain dependent upon practical exigencies, never legitimately lead a theoretical orthodoxy” (Spivak).

My quest for expanding the “field of discussion” began with my doctoral dissertation, “Incidental Occurrences: Exchanges between British and Indian Women Writers (1840-1940),” I claimed that in the late 19th and early 20th century there existed a subaltern female transnational, transactional, and subaltern public sphere between British and Indian women. My formulation of the female public sphere is a reworking of Habermas’ bourgeois European Public Sphere. The female transnational public sphere, that I theorized and critiqued, is a discursive space that is the repository of what Reina Lewis calls as the “partial, fragmented, and contradictory narratives” of women. As Gramsci, the man who first gave us the theory of the subaltern, affirms, the history of the subaltern is almost always episodic, fragmentary and contradictory. Knowledge of these fragmentary and contradictory responses by women, that studies in my dissertation, thus prevents us from accepting and perpetuating the previously tempting and easy misconception that all literary texts dealing with the complex issues and clotted history of empire are in fact examples of what has been described as “the disarming simplicity of the ruler-ruled, colonizer-colonized” category. Instead, I assert that in any cultural contact between diverse communities each encounter illuminates the other in multiple and irrefutable ways.

Bachelor of Arts (CU), Honours in English (Presidency College, 1996)

Master of Arts, English Literature, (University of Rochester, USA, 1999)

Ph.D., English Literature and Feminist Studies (T.C.U., USA 2005)

Recently, I returned home to Kolkata and joined my alma mater, the renowned Presidency University (the erstwhile Presidency College). I am a product of all that I have learned and experienced in the two decades of residing and teaching at the university level in the USA that preceded the new relocation/dislocation. I have taught at University of Rochester (USA), Texas Christian University(USA), and Millikin University, where I was promoted to an Associate Professor of English (and received tenure in 2011), as well as served as the Co-Director of Gender Studies. My research continues to be on constructions of the female subject in situation of cultural marginality and epistemic violence. I also take deep interest in oral and prose narratives and poems produced by displaced women. I teach the following areas: British literature, Victorian Novels, Modernist literature, Literature by women, Postcolonial Anglophone literature, Bollywood

Presidency University, Kolkata (India)

• February 1st, 2014 - January 30th, 2015 - Chair, Presidency University Committee Against Sexual Harassment (PUCASH), Presidency University, Kolkata, India.

• August 29th, 2014 - November 2nd, 2014 - Teacher-in-Charge and Mentor, Dean of Students’ Office, Presidency University, India.

• August 29th, 2014 - November 2nd, 2014 - Convener of Student Welfare Board & Mentor, Presidency University, India.

• August 29th, 2014 - November 2nd, 2014 - Chair, Presidency University Student Feedback Committee, Presidency University, India. August 29-November 2, 2014.

• August 29th, 2014 - November 2nd, 2014 - Chair, Student Aid Committee, Presidency University, India.

Millikin University (USA)

• Fall 2008 - 2011 - Academic Advisor & Mentor for Amnesty International, Millikin University, U.S. A.

• Fall 2008 - 2011 Academic Advisor & Mentor for Sister Circle, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Spring 2008 - 2013 - Academic Advisor & Mentor for International Student Organisation, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2006 - 2013 - Academic Advisor & Mentor for Students United Darfur Action Group, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Spring 2008 - Spring 2011 - Academic Advisor & Mentor for Multicultural Student Organisation (comprised of 11 under-represented student organisations), Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2007 - 2013 - Chair of the Women’s History Month Committee, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2010 - 2013 - Member of Council on Faculty, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2007 - 2015 - Member and Mentor for the Long Vanderburg Scholarship Committee, Millikin University, U.S.A,

• Fall 2008 - 2009 - Advisor and Mentor to Sigma Tau Delta Advisors, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2006 - 2009 - Member on Committee on Faculty Scholarship and Academic Development, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2008 - Member of the English Department Recruitment and Retention of Students Committee Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2008 - Member of the English Department Writing Major Committee, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2008 - Member of the English Department Literature and Requirement Team, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2007 - Spring 2008 - Member of the English Department Committee on New Faculty Appointments, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2006 - 2013 - Member of the English Literature Assessment Team, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2006 - Spring 2007 Member of the Critical Writing, Reading, and Research Committee, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2006 - Spring 2007 - Member of the Honors in English Committee, Millikin University, U.S.A Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2006 - Spring 2007 Member of the English Department Scheduling Committee, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2005 - 2013 - Member of the English Department Literature Committee, Millikin University, U.S.A.

• Fall 2005 - Spring 2006 - Member of the Faculty Search Committee in Shakespeare, Early Modern literature and Drama, Millikin University, U.S.A.

1997-1999 at Univ, of Rochester, USA

2000-2005 at T.C.U, USA.

2005-2013 at Millikin University, USA

2013-Present at Presidency University, Kolkata

PhD Students Under My Supervision—completed their PhD:

1. Ms Chandrama Basu (Registration Number: R18RS103210237): PhD Completed in September, 2025.

PhD Students Under My Supervision

1. Ms Shampa Bhul (Registration Number: R-18RS103270242): Pre-submission done

2. Ms Sonal Kapur (Registration Number: R-18RS103210235): Pre-submission scheduled for Feb 2026.

3. Ms. Rinki Debnath (Registration Number: R-18RS103270242): conducting her research

4. Ms. Sainaz Kazi-- Course Work is continuing

Book

• Unexpected and Unexplained: Intellectual Exchanges between British and Indian Women Writers 1840-1940. January 2026. Frontpage.

Translated Monograph:

• Labour Train by Manjira Saha. Translated from the original Bengali into English with a theoretical introduction for the translation.

Chapters in Edited Volumes:

• “The Scandalous Deconstruction of Victorian Morals in Anna Lombard: What Made Victoria(ns) Cross?” The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture, edited by Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier, Routledge, 2023, pp. 511–528.

• “Virtual Reality: Social Media and/as the Public Sphere.” Situating Social Media: Gender, Caste, Solidarity, Protest, edited by Samata Biswas and Atig Ghosh, Women Unlimited, 2020, pp. 63–101.

• “The Artisans of Revolt: Peasant Activities of Naxalbari.” From Popular Movements to Rebellion: The Naxalite Decade, edited by Ranabir Samaddar, Routledge, 2018, pp. 121–151

• “Mobile Women and Inter/National Narratives: The Cases of Gertrude Hudson and Krishnabhabhini Das.” The ‘Other’ Universe: An Anthology of Women’s Studies, edited by Aparna Bandyopadhya and Krishna Dasgupta, Setu Prakashani, 2015.

Articles in Journals:

• “‘Why So Much Blood?’ Narratives of Violence against Women in Tripura.” Economic and Political Weekly: Special Issues on Gender, vol. 49, no. 43–44, 1 Nov. 2014.

• “Lives Delimited by Barbed Wires.” Refugee Watch, no. 18, Apr. 2003, pp. 6–8. South Asia Forum for Human Rights and Calcutta Research Group.

Forthcoming

• Fractured Spaces: Intersectional Approaches to Migration and Displacement. “Writing this History is Like touching Madness”: Gender in 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Co-edited by Dr. Purna Banerjee and Priya Singh (expected by June 2026)

Online Publication

• Rokeya S. Hossain https:www.trags.org/indian-feminisms

Purna Banerjee

Associate Professor

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Purna Banerjee Associate Professor