Qualification

BA English, St Xavier's College (Calcutta University), 1998.
MA English, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2000.
M.Phil English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta 2002.
Dissertation title: The Etruscan Politics of the Hieroglyphic Body: Towards a Mythopeotics of the Postcommunist Subject. Advisor: Prof Santanu Biswas.
PhD, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University. Thesis title: Visualising the City: Photography, Modernity and Calcutta (1850-1950), 2022

Past Experience

Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi. August 2011- July 2017
Invited to present a series of Lectures as Guest Lecturer on New Theories of Literature at Department of English, Presidency College, Calcutta, between Sept-Oct 2004.
Full-time Lecturer in English at Charuchandra College, Calcutta University, under West Bengal College Service Commission, from November 2002-June 2003.
Full-time Lecturer in English at Haldia Government College, Haldia under Public Service Commission Government of West Bengal, from Nov2001-Nov 2002.
Guest Lecturer in UG English at Jadavpur University, Calcutta from Feb 2001-Nov 2001.
Guest lecturer at Department of English, Presidency College, Nov 2000-Feb 2001.
I also had a stint in the cultural media, being a member of the The Bengal Post, Calcutta, The Hindustan Times, Delhi, Daily News and Analysis (DNA), Bombay among others. Since August 2011, I am teaching at AUD.

My Zone / Area of Expertise

https://sayandeb.in/

AREAS OF TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTEREST

History and politics of visuality in colonial and postcolonial South Asia.
Metropolar modernisms in Europe and South Asia
Urban Culture Studies
Shakespeare & Adaptation Studies

Courses offered

· Metropolis and Modernity I (PG)
· Metropolis and Modernity II (PG)
· Shakespeare on Screen (PG)
· Photography: History, Theory, Practice (PG)
· Literature and Cinema (UG)
· Modernism in Europe (UG)

FUNDED PROJECT

2022 marks the sesquicentennial of what can be called the first use of caricature in an Indian daily. Since then, illustrated humour has been a key part of India’s public life - be it cartoons, strips, caricature or graphic storytelling. But its long and rich life has not been substantively archived. This project, under the aegis of AUD, systematically digitized and annotated a part of the vast visual history of illustrated humour in Bengal. Populated with rare images and a substantive overview essay, the website provides a robust insight into the history of caricature and illustrative narrative in Bengal. It can be called a digital archive, a public history resource, and a general corpus on the subject, and is the first of its kind in India. For more information, please see http://humourinbengal.info/

MONOGRAPH

My first monograph Uttam kumar: A Life in Cinema has been published by Bloomsbury Academic in August 2021, bringing together my interest in popular culture, Bengali cinema and star studies. This book-length study on the life, cinema and afterlife of Bengali actor Uttam Kumar is not a biography of a matinee idol. Rather, it is primarily a contextual and intellectual history of Uttam Kumar’s cinema. It is also an exploration and interrogation of the star-persona in reconstituting the bhadrolok Bengali visual cultural world in the post-Partition period. Though the book is aimed as a serious work of cultural history, it is written for a wider readership.

More about the book can be found at

https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/uttam-kumar-9789390358854/

https://sayandeb.in/books/uttam-kumar-a-life-in-cinema/

LECTURES/TALKS:

Caricaturing the Calcutta kind, or, how to listen to colonial laughter, a conversation with Abeer Gupta, Ambedkar University Delhi, March 25, 2022.
Nayoker Bhumikai (The hero in Bengali cinema), panel, Jharkhand Literary Meet, Ranchi, March 6.
Uttam Kumar: A Life in Cinema, a conversation with Arka Das, Waypoint Café, January 02, 2022.
Writing the Visual: On Forms that are Best Seen, webinar,
Centre for Writing Studies, Jindal Global University on May 29, 2020.
Bengal’s post-Partition imaginary, or the enchantments of a screen bhadrolok, a talk at Centre for Studies in Developing Society (CSDS) Delhi, March 6, 2020.
On Satyajit Ray’s Nayak, a talk at Habitat Film Appreciation Forum at India Habitat Centre, Delhi, August 14, 2018.
Reading Literature, four lectures, Refresher Course in English, UGC HRD Centre, University of North Bengal, January 17 & 18, 2018.
New Theories of Literature, lecture series, Department of English, Presidency College, Calcutta, Sept-Oct 2004.

Awards

AWARDS/FELLOWSHIPS

Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow to UK in 2016.
Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) Research Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS), University of Leiden, the Netherlands from April-July, 2015.
University Research Fellow (URF) at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta between January and November 2001.

Publications

JOURNALS

‘Aesthetic enclosure and insurgent critique in Ray’s fantasy fables’ in Cafe Dissensus Journal 58 (Satyajit Ray Special Issue). Ed. Roshni Sengupta; May 2021.
‘Bollywood's Propaganda Wheels Have Been Set in Motion’, Economic and Political Weekly [EPW] 54:21. Published online May 21, 2019.
‘A postcolonial iconi-city: Re-reading Uttam Kumar’s cinema as metropolar melodrama’, Journal of South Asian History and Culture [Bengali Cinema: Star Texts, Genre, Tropes] 8:2:171-185; Routledge, Taylor & Francis. 2017. Print. ISBN 194724987. DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2017.1304090
‘The Indian Partition and the Making of New Scopic Regime in Bengali Cinema’, European Journal of English Studies. [Spl Issue Poetics and Partition]. 19.3:255-270. Routledge/Taylor & Francis. 2016. Print. ISSN 1382-5577. DOI: 10.1080/13825577.2015.1091220
‘The Irrepressible city of Modernity’, [Review of Tanika Sarkar and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (ed) Calcutta: The Stormy Decades, New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2015] Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), 51:20, 14 May, 2016, pp 28-31
‘The Endangered City in Rituparno Ghosh’s Early Cinema of Confinement’, Journal of South Asian History and Culture, 6:2. Pg 277-289. 2015. Routledge Taylor & Francis. ISBN 194724987: Print.
‘Ageless Hero, Sexless Man: A Possible Pre-History and Three Hypotheses On Satyajit Ray’s Feluda’, South Asia Review, [Satyajit Ray Special Issue]. 36.1:109-130. Routledge/Taylor & Francis. 2015. Print. ISSN 0275-9527.
‘The Heroic Laughter of Modernity: The Life, Cinema and Afterlife of Bengali matinee idol Uttam Kumar’, Film International. 10:04/05:82-91; Intellect, London. 2012. Print. ISSN 1651-6826. DOI: 10.1386/fint.10.4-5.82_1

BOOK CHAPTERS

‘The Spectral Coloniality of Calcutta’s Ochterlony’, in Henco Bekkering, Adèle Esposito, Charles Goldblum (Ed) Ideas of the City in Asian Settings; Ch 2: 45-80. Amsterdam University Press, 2019. ISBN 9789462985612.
‘The Indiscreet Charms of Spatial Ugliness: An Enquiry into a (Post)-colonial City’, in Ela Przybylo and Sara Rodrigues (Ed) On the Politics of Ugliness, Ch 8: 171-192; Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. ISBN 9783319767826.
‘In Shakespeare’s Do We Trust?’ (co-authored with Zehra Mehdi) in Salman Akhtar (Ed) Mistrust: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms; Ch 5, pp 83-106; Karnac Books/Routledge, London. 2017. ISBN 9781782204886.
‘Le pont sur le fleuve Hooghly: Modernité, Mobilité, Visualité’ [Bridge over river Hooghly: Modernity, mobility, visuality] in Tatiana Debroux, Yannick Vanhaelen, Judith le Maire (Ed) L'entrée en ville: Aménager, Expérimenter, Représenter; Ch 8, pp 131-145; Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles. 2017. ISBN 9782800416168.
‘Unveiling the Anthropo(s)cene: Burning Seas, Cinema of Mourning and the Globalisation of Apocalypse’, in Charlotte Mathieson (Ed) Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea 1600-Present; Ch 9, pp 217-238. Palgrave Macmillan, London. 2016. ISBN 978-1-137-58115-0 (Print). 978-1-137-58116-7 (ebk)
In Vogue: Lessons from a screen cosmopolitan’, in Visual Entanglements in Bengali film: Landscapes, moments and contemporary motifs; (Ed) Roshni Sengupta. (Forthcoming. Details awaited.)
The Slapstick State: Loss and Recovery of a Political Language in India of the Present’ (with Baidik Bhattacharya) in Walking with the Enemy: Reclaiming the Language of Power and Manipulation in the Post-Truth Era, Ed: Gediminas Gasparavicius, Maia Toteva, Tom Williams. (Forthcoming. Details awaited.)

CULTURAL PRESS / BOOK REVIEW

A Legendary Legacy’ [Review of 3 Rays: Stories from Satyajit Ray, PRH, 2021], Biblio: A Review of Books, 26: 10-12 (Oct-Dec, 2021) pp 22-23.
‘A Divine Version of Ourselves’ [Review of Reza Aslan’s God: A Human History, Bantam Press/PRHI 2017]. Biblio: A Review of Books, XXIII:10–12 (Oct - Dec, 2018). P 38
‘The Contradictory Bengali’ [Review of Sudeep Chakravarti’s The Bengalis: A Portrait of a Community, Aleph Book Company, 2017 & Parimal Ghosh’s What Happened to the Bhadrolok; Primus Books, 2016]. Biblio: A Review of Books, XXIII: 1-3 (Jan-Mar, 2018). P 32-33
‘The flaneur outpaces a tram’ [Review of Kushanava Choudhury’s The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta, Bloomsbury, 2017] Outlook Magazine, Issue dated October 8, 2017.
‘The Fifties Moment’ [Review of Aarti Wani’s The Fantasy of Modernity: Romantic Love in Bombay Cinema of the 1950s, Cambridge University Press, 2016]. Biblio: A Review of Books, XXI:4 (Apr, 2016). P 20.
‘14, Zakaria Street’ [Review of Kunal Basu’s Kalkatta, Picador India 2015]. Biblio: A Review of Books, XXI:1-3 (Jan-Mar 2016). P 35.
Crucible of intellect’ [Review of Patriots, Poets and Prisoners: Selections from Ramananda Chatterjee’s The Modern Review 1907-1947, HarperCollins 2016] Outlook Magazine LVI: 41, p 88. October 17, 2016.
‘The Shame Is Squarely On Them’ [Review of Taslima Nasreen’s Exile, Penguin/Hamish Hamilton 2016]. Outlook Magazine, Issue dated 12 December, 2016.
‘The Family and the City’ [Review of Chandak Sengupta’s The Rays Before Satyajit: Creativity and Modernity in Colonial India, OUP, 2016]. Biblio: A Review of Books, XX1:12 (Dec 2016). P 23.
‘Passing Through the Popular’ [Review of Baradwaj Rangan, Dispatches from the Wall Corner: A Journey through Indian Cinema, Tranquebar, 2014], Biblio: A Review of Books, XIX:11-12 (Nov-Dec 2014). P 32
All Fall Down’ [Review of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s One Amazing Thing, Penguin India, 2010] Biblio: A Review of Books; XV:5-6 (May-June 2010)..

CULTURAL PRESS / CINEMA (SELECTED)

‘In Search of a Gestalt in Ray’s Cinema’, Critical Collective, May Issue (Satyajit Ray Centenary).
‘The Enigma of Arrival’ (Part 1) & ‘Between a popular star and a keeper of everyday conscience’ (Part II), Critical Collective, Sept & Oct 2020.
‘Uttam Kumar and Intimations of Immortality’, The Hindu, July 24.
13. ‘Stardust Memories: The Cosmopolitanism of Uttam Kumar and His Era-Defining Cinema’, TheWire.in, published online, July 24, 2017.
‘Bengali Cinema is Moribund and Smug in its Comfort Zone’, TheWire.in, published online, June 25, 2016.
‘The Man Who Would Be King’, Caravan Magazine, 7/2012; pp 100-105.
‘Power to the Bourgeoisie: How the Left left Bengali Cinema’, Caravan Magazine, 12/2011; pp 20-21.
‘Screened Out: Why an Appreciation of Bengali auteur Tapan Sinha is Much Overdue’, Caravan Magazine, 04/2009; pp 59-62
Requiems: Three Movies that Examine Communism in a Revisionist Light’, Caravan Magazine, 10/2009; pp 74-79..

CULTURAL PRESS/POLITICS (SELECTED)

‘A letter to Modi voters: If you had called the PM’s bluff, you could have spared India its agonies’ (co-authored with Rajendran Narayan), Scroll.in, June 22, 2021
‘A made-in-India shock doctrine, with a little help from Latin America’ (co-authored with Rajendran Narayan), Monthly Review (Online), April 27, 2021.
‘Bengal has an impossible choice to make this election’, Indian Express Opinion Pages, March 27, 2020
‘Game on in Bengal’, Indian Express Opinion Pages, December 23, 2020
‘AAP and the Perils of Politics Beyond Ideology’ TheWire, March 03, 2020.
‘The Young Against the New Partition: Why The CAA & NRC Are the Biggest Tests for Independent India’, Indiatimes Online, January 07, 2020.
‘Modi's Greatest Trick: Turning Our Deepest Insecurities into A System of Governance’. (co-authored with Rajendran Narayan), Huffington Post, published May 22, 2019.
‘The PM as Pracharak’, (co-authored with Rajendran Narayan), TheWire, May 05, 2019.
‘No Saffron on the Plate’, (co-authored with Anirban Biswas), Indian Express, March 30, 2019.
‘‘Don’t Cry for CPI(M)’, TheWire.in, March 10, 2018.
‘The political economy of deceit’, National Herald, September 01, 2017.
. Why Is the BJP Communalising West Bengal Instead of Offering It Good Governance?’ TheWire, July 6, 2017.
‘Mamata takes all’, Indian Express, May 21, 2016.
‘The more things remain the same’, Indian Express, April 5, 2016.

CULTURAL PRESS/ART (SELECTED)

‘Sights and Sites’, Review of Gauri Gill and Seher Shah’s joint exhibition ‘Ways of Seeing’. Art India Magazine, XIX:II: Quarter II: 2015, p 79-81.
‘The City of Continuous Contrasts’, Review of Rathin Mitra’s ‘Calcutta The City I love’ and Clyde Waddell’s ‘A Yank’s Memories of Calcutta’. Art India Magazine, XIX:II: Quarter II: 2015, p 82-84.
‘The Final Frontier’, Review of Sebastião Salgado’s exhibition ‘Genesis’ [Natural History Museum, London, April-Sept, 2013] Art India Magazine, XVIII: II, Quarter II, 2014.
‘Camera Femina’, Review of ‘Subjects and Spaces: Women in Indian Photography, 1850s to 1950s’. Art India Magazine, XVIII: IV: Quarter IV: 2014, p 88-89.
‘A Course of Action’, Report on ACUA Curatorship Programme, Art India Magazine, XVII: II: Quarter II:2013, p 42-43.
‘Film Fare’, Review of ‘Project Cinema City’ Exhibition. Art India Magazine, XVII: II: Quarter II: 2013, pp 92-94.
‘Between Escape and Entrapment’, Review of ‘Pablo Bartholomew’s Calcutta Diaries’, Art India Magazine, XVII: III: Quarter III: 2013, pp 85-87.
‘Shot on Location’, Review of Nemai Ghosh’s exhibition ‘Satyajit Ray and Beyond’, Art India Magazine, XVII: III: Quarter III: 2013, p 82-84.
‘The Oddball’s Wondrous Capers’ [Lead piece on the work of Sarnath Banerjee], Special Issue on Graphic Novel. Art India Magazine, XVI: IV: Quarter IV: 2012, p 36-39.

CULTURAL PRESS/ MOTLEY (SELECTED)

‘Not Merely a Laughing Matter’, Indian Express, January 24, 2022.
‘A brief literary companion to solitude in modern classics for the self-isolated reader’, Scroll, April 05, 2020.
‘Mother Tongue, tied’, Business Standard, Opinion Page, May 05, 2018.
‘It Ain’t No Revolution’, Indian Express, Edit page, July 24, 2018.
‘Being Human is so Yesterday’, Business Standard, Opinion Page, April 8, 2017.
‘Finding Forever’, Business Standard, Opinion Page, June 09, 2017.

SUMMER SCHOOL/ FD PROGRAMME

Attended the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School titled Calcutta: City/Contemporaneity between June 18-29, 2018 at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. The Summer School was co-hosted by Lingnan University, Hong Kong and Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore.
Attended the UGC-HRD 60th Orientation Programme at Jadavpur University, Calcutta, held from February 17- March 15, 2016.
Participated in the London Critical Theory Summer School at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, from July 1-July 12th, 2013.

Seminar / Conferences

Co-planned and co-executed the Graphic Storytelling in India: A Symposium, which involved 25 speakers (including artistes, practitioners, academics and doctoral students) from across India, Germany and the UK. The symposium was co-sponsored by Ambedkar Uuiversity Delhi and hosted by Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket, New Delhi and was held from 22-24 November, 2018. Details can be found at http://www.knma.in/graphic-storytelling-india-three-day-symposium-collaboration-ambedkar-university-delhi-0
Presented the paper A Bridge on River Hugli: Visualities, Regimes, Practices at the International Seminar Entering the city: Spaces, transports, perceptions, and representations from the 18th century to the present. Brussels, Belgium, 15 & 16 October, 2015. Conference hosted by MICM-ARC Research Project & Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. [Sponsored participant]
Presented the paper Across the Violent Seas: Aparna Sen's Yugant and the Furtive Arrival of Globalisation in Bengali Cinema at the Global Studies Conference, Global Studies Journal & Ambedkar University Delhi, 5-7 September, 2013.
Presented the paper The Making of Calcutta as a Cinematic City at the Screen International Conference ‘Cosmopolitan Screens’, Glasgow, 28-30th June, 2013. Conference organised by OUP journal Screen and Glasgow University, Scotland.
Presented the paper Reasons of the State: Communist Politics and Open Society in Bengal at the International Society for Intellectual History Seminar Use and Abuse of Reason, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, 27-31st July, 2004. [Sponsored participant]
Presented the paper Battala Literature and the History of its Production at the International Book History Seminar, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, 2004.
Presented the paper Why Aren’t there no Women in Feluda at the International Seminar Children’s Literature at Jadavpur University, Calcutta, 11-13th December, 2003.
Presented the paper The Cultural Politics of Battala and the Re-interrogation of Postcolonial Peripheries at the Cultural Studies Workshop, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta & ENRECA Danida & SEPHIS, Shantiniketan, 25–31 January, 2002.
Presented the paper The disparate signifiers of the Body in Coleridge’s Divine Comedy at the International Seminar Rethinking Romanticism, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, February 8-9, 2001.

THESIS SUPERVISION | MA DISSERTATION