Priyanka Das

Assistant Professor

PhD English (Jawaharlal Nehru University): On the Desensitization of Violence in Game of Thrones.

M.Phil English (Jawaharlal Nehru University) - On Masculinity and Scopophilia in Indian Cinema.

MA English (Jawaharlal Nehru University): On English Literature and Cultural Studies.

Owing to my rendezvous with Popular Culture and Critical Theory, I have, over the years, presented, published and delivered talks on fantasy, science fiction, graphic novels, Asian dramas and various webseries. 

My MPhil from JNU was grounded on Masculinity and Scopophilia in Indian Cinema
which offered new insights into gender representation and voyeuristic aspects of film
consumption.
For my Doctoral degree, the American Fantasy-saga Game of Thrones became the
platform through which I explored the normalization and desensitization of violence.

Having finished my postgraduate in English Literature, I secured UGC-JRF in 2011 and have been engaged in college teaching since then.

My first teaching assignment was at Delhi College of Arts and Commerce. Thereafter I had taken up short-term teaching assignments at Jamia Millia Islamia and JNU. Later I joined Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi, as a full time faculty before joining Presidency University.

I received the “Certificate of Honor for Outstanding Learner” conferred by People's Republic of China and Hangzhou Normal University, for my paper “The Pandemic as a Derridean Event”.

I have had the privilege of presenting my research at prestigious international forums, including Birkbeck University of London, University of Vienna, Austria, University of Lisbon, Portugal, Hangzhou Normal University, China, New York University, Middle Tennessee State University, Ball State University, and Delta College Michigan. At the national level, I have contributed to discussions at JNU, DU, AMU, BHU, BU, University of Kerala, Pondicherry University, and University of Kashmir.

I have also been invited by University of South Africa to speak on Holocaust and Indian
Partition, by University of Kashmir on Food and Posthumanism, and by University of Kerala on
Biopolitics and Medical Discourse, among others.

I am currently working on Monster Studies and Posthumanism in East Asian fiction.

Pedagogically, I specialise in Marxism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Digital Humanities.

Texts I teach:

UG1:
Partition Literature: Saadat Hasan Manto
Aristotle's The Poetics

UG2:
American Literature:
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.
Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman.
Frederick Douglass's Slave Narrative.
Fantasy: JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings / JK Rowling's Harry Potter

UG3:
Introduction to Marxism: The Communist Manifesto
Literary Theory: Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan. 
Literature of the Diaspora: Rohinton Mistry, and Jhumpa Lahiri.

Pre-CBCS:
Graphic Novel: Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis 
Travel Writing: Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries

PG1: 
Advanced Theory: Marxism: Antonio Gramsci's The Prison Notebooks 
Holocaust Literature: Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Anne Frank.

PG2: 
Tragedy: Edward Albee, The Zoo Story. 
Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner. 

Body in Popular Culture:
a. Bollywood Films
b. Game of Thrones

Postgraduate Supervisions:

1. Urvashi Mukherjee (2018), "Adaptation, Translation and Transformation in Vishal Bhardwaj's Saat Khoon Maaf"
2. Jahnabi Mukherjee (2018), "Disease, Anti-semitism and Otherization in Murnau's Nosferatu"
3. Ayantika Lahiri (2018), "Murdering Author in Jung Jae Doo’s 2016 TV series W" 
4. Susrita Das (2019), "Metalanguage of Internet Memes in Web 2.0" 
5. Shreshtha Chowdhury (2019), "Female Body and Psyche in Manto"
6. Sangita Neogi (2019), "Music and Violence in Holocaust Movies" 
7. Arjita Bag (2020), "Muslims as the New Jews: Reflections in Elie Wiesel's Night"
8. Ripon Sk (2020), "Legalization of Jews' Persecution: An Althusserian Reading" 
9. Supriyo Das (2021), "From Yellow Star to Gas Chamber: The Many Faces of Dehumanization in Night and If This is a Man."
10. Amelika Das (2021), "Mapping the Trajectory of Jewish Estrangement: A Reading of Night and The Diary of a Young Girl."
11. Neha Sarkar (2021), "Killing Machines: A Psychosocial Reading of Holocaust Perpetrators". 
12. Aishani Pande (2023), "Re-reading the Multiverse of Men in Khaled Hosseini's Novels of Afghanistan"
13. Mukulita Karmakar (2023), "Haunting Portrayal of Memories in The Kite Runner". 
14. Akash Guha (2023), "Witnessing the Holocaust: Objects, Memory, and the Capitalist Culture in Anne Frank's, Cynthia Ozick's, and Elie Wiesel's texts."
16. Sainaz Farzana Kazi (2024) 
17. Risha Shah (2024) 
18. Sharmishtha Saha (2024)

Board Member of All About Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis.
https://www.allaboutambedkaronline.com/

Life Member of Muse India: The Literary eJournal.
http://www.museindia.com/

Miyazaki Contributor in Association for Asian Studies

Member of the Midwest Popular Culture Association

Member of the Medieval Association of the Midwest

Book:
Holocaust vs Popular Culture: Interrogating Incompatibility and Universalization, Routledge UK (2023)

Book Edited: 
Status of Hindus as per Jurists, Sufis, and Intellectuals of Sultanate Era. by Tabish Khan (2016).

Chapters in Book:

"Domains of Private Melancholy: The Burden of Language."  Abandonment and Abjection: Melancholy in Philosophy and Art. Ed. Saitya Brata Das. Springer. 2020.

"The Game in Game of Thrones", in Game of Thrones: The Post-Apocalypse. (Vernon Press, forthcoming)

Select Pieces:

"The Monstrous and the Mundane: Power, Morality, and Monstrosity in JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings", English Studies in India, University of Kashmir (December 2023). 

“Die Monster, You Don’t Belong in this World: The Spectre of Genocide in Japanese Digital Games”, Acta Ludologica, Vol 4 Issue 2. The University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Slovak Republic. (December 2021)

“The Banality of Existence”, Muse India. Issue 99. (2021).

“Magna Mortalitas: Decrypting the Pandemic from the Medieval to the Digital”, Enarratio, Medieval Association of the Midwest. (Forthcoming).

“From Aliens to Mermaids: The Supernatural in Korean Dramas”, in Messengers from the Stars: On Science Fiction and Fantasy. University of Lisbon, Portugal. (Forthcoming).

"Boccaccio and Netflix: Imagining the Medieval Pandemic in a Capitalist Bubble”, English Studies in India, University of Kashmir. (October 2021).

"Echoes from the Elysium." Muse India. Issue 97. (June 2021)

"Hell hath enlarged Herself: Reading the Salem Witch Trials in Times of Corona." The Golden Line. Special Issue on Diseases, Death and Disorder. (May 2020)

“The Other Jester- Tenali Rama in Graphic Novels and Cartoon Shows.” Muse India. Issue 91 (May 2020)

"Rethinking Communism in the Age of Trump and Modi: The Bengali Film Ghya Chang Fou sets a Milestone in Cinematic History", (with Mahitosh Mandal) in Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration. (December 2019)

“Magic Realism and Symbolic Death in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away” in The Journal of Manga Studies. (forthcoming)

"An Abated Mass of Flesh." Muse India. Issue 81 (Sep- Oct 2018)

"Galaxies Far, Far Away." Muse India. Issue 77 (Jan- Feb 2018)

"Convention or Innovation: Gendering the Debate of Indian Commercials." Cinephilia. Special Issue on Advertisement

"The Digital Reproduction of Violence: Decoding Game of Thrones." Asian Quarterly. Vol. 15. Issue 4. 2017

"At the End of the Day. Translation of Jagadish Gupta’s Short Stories from Bengali to English." The Literary Voyage. Vol. III, Issue I. January- April 2016. ISSN: 2348-5272. 2016.
 

Conference Presentations and Invited Lectures:

"Algorithmic Appetites: Posthuman Consumption and the Rise of Techno-Taste" at Department of English, University of Kashmir (March 3-5, 2024)

"Anatomy of Fear: Biopolitics and Medical Discourse in Popular Culture", Plenary Talk, delivered at SVR NSS College, Kerala. (Feb 14, 2024)  

"Celluloid Himalayas: Bhutan's Contribution to South Asian Cinematic Dialogues" at International Conference on Contemporary South Asian Cinemas, organized by Association for Film Studies in South Asia (Feb 2-4, 2024)

"Taste.exe: Hacking the Gastronomic Code of Upload's Techno-Taste Revolution.", at Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, and Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Kerala. (Dec 14, 2023)

"The Contagious Dejavu: Theorizing the Pandemic Existence," at University of Vienna, Austria (Nov 17-18, 2022)

"Universalization or Trivialization: Holocaust in Indian Classrooms" at The MTSU Holocaust Studies Conference, Special Session on 'Holocaust Education: Methods and Practice', MTSU, USA (Sep 23, 2022)

"Transmutability of Trauma into Literature: Understanding the Holocaust and the Partition of India", in Lecture Series "Old Countries, New States: The Borders of War", University of South Africa (June 23, 2022)

"Romancing the Monster: Gumihos, Robots and Hybrid Sexuality in Korean Dramas" New York University, US (May 6, 2022)

"From Aliens to Mermaids: The Supernatural Anthropocene in Korean Dramas” at Messengers from the Stars: Science Fiction and Fantasy International Conference: Episode VI, University of Lisbon, Portugal (November 25-26, 2021)
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“Decentralization of Home: The Pandemic as a Derridean Event”, Hangzhou Normal University, China (November 12-14, 2021)
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“There are no innocents, not anymore: Holocaust and Medievalism in the Japanese Anime Castlevania”, Delta College, Michigan (November 4-6, 2022)

“Magna Mortalitas: Decrypting the Pandemic from the Medieval to the Digital” Beneficence in the Medieval World, Medieval Association of the Midwest and Ball State University, Indiana (October 29-30, 2021)

“The Wine will Flow Red: Political Violence of Marriage in Game of Thrones”, Birkbeck, University of London, (October 9-10, 2021)

“Boccaccio and Netflix: Imagining the Medieval Pandemic in a Capitalist Bubble", in Reimagining the Real: Literary Response to Pandemics, University of Kashmir, India (August 23-25, 2021)

"From Lady Macbeth to Bulbbul: Women Unfurling Chaos in Oikos and Polis", at AMU's UGC Online Conference (August 19-20, 2020)

"Back to the Double and Return of the Repressed: The Uncanny in Zemeckis' Science Fiction Back to the Future", at Birkbeck, University of London (August 17, 2019)

"Folklore and The Woman Question: A Gramscian Take on Thakurmar Jhuli", at Central University of Jharkhand, on Aug 20-22, 2019

"Digital Literacy in Digital India: Critiquing the Conception and Reception of SWAYAM", at the University of Liberal Arts, Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Aug 22-23, 2019

"Linguistic Hegemony Against Indigenous Languages: The Untold (Hi)Story of Bangla", at KIIT, Odhisha, in July 2019 

"Mortification of Marginality through the Politics of Language: Reading Rohith Vemula's Suicide", at Department of English, Berhampore University, Odisha, India, on Feb 8-9, 2019

"Educate, Agitate, Generate Meme: Ambedkar and the Fight Against the Internet Trolls" at CSSSC, (Feb 21, 2018)

"Unfit for Public Consumption: The Fate of Commericial Advertisements", at Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi (April 2017)

"Count Dracula meets Godzilla: Reading the European and the Asian Monster", at IIAS, Shimla, (June 2011)

"Race, Ideology and Bangali Bhadrolok" at Banaras Hindu University (2011)

"Representation or Tokenism: Studying the Figure of Dalit Women in Hindi Cinema", at Savitribai Phule Pune University (August 2012)

"The Representation of Domestic Helps in Colonial Bengal", at Jawaharlal Nehru University, (2014)

"Triply Cursed: Dalit Women's Testimonials from Suburbs of the Capital" in National Conference on Dalit Art and Imagery: Depiction and Aspiration through Visual Imagery, at CSDS, Delhi (2013)

"Gandhi in Popular Culture: Projection and Reception" at Department of History, Loreto College, Kolkata (Nov 07, 2019)

"From Ganifa to UNO: The Journey of Card Games from Medieval to Contemporary India", at Central University of Jammu (2018)

"Mass Exodus of Malayalis to Saudi: A Literary Depiction", at University of Kerala, (2017)