Contributors to Intersections
Issue 22


Rita Banerji is a freelance writer, photographer, and social activist currently based in Calcutta, India. Her book Sex and Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies was released by Penguin Books in November 2008 (and internationally by Penguin Global in May 2009). Some of the magazines and journals where Rita's works have been published include the London Magazine, New Orleans Review, Femina, Review-Asia (Hong Kong), and the Global Media Journal (in September). She is also a regular contributor to the Word Worth Magazine (US). Rita is the founder and chief coordinator of an international, online campaign against female genocide in India, called The 50 Million Missing campaign. The environment is her other focus, a field that was the subject of her academic training and work while she lived in the US for eleven years. During that time she worked with Chipko (a women's grassroots movement in India), and with the World Resources Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.
Nivedita Basu is a lecturer in English at Kalindi College, University of Delhi. In 2008 she completed her M. Phil thesis that explored the working class origins of early Victorian melodrama. Her areas of interest include gender studies, especially in the literature of the Renaissance and the Victorian period. She has presented a number of papers at National and International Seminars. At present she is working on a research project that focuses on the modernist aspects of Victorian stagecraft.
Kamalakar Bhat is a Reader at the Department of English of Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar in Maharashtra, India. He is a bilingual writer and a translator between Kannada and English. His current research interests include representations of memory, future, and dissent in cultural discourses. His publications include a collection of poems in Kannada (2006).
Tanya Caulfield was awarded her PhD in the field of Anthropology by the University of Queensland. Her doctoral research considered different female sexualities and lived experiences with regard to unmarried women in India. She obtained her masters degree from Monash University in the field of Women's Studies, which focused on the dowry violence phenomenon in India. Tanya has worked with many women's organisations and NGOs in India and worked for an international humanitarian and development agency, where she undertook research on women and livelihoods in post-tsunami India and Aceh. Her research interests include sexuality, gender, difference, and identity in India. Tanya is currently working at the Parliament of Victoria with the Family and Community Development Committee.
Saumitra Chakravarty is Professor and Head of Dept of English in VVS College, Bangalore, India. Her articles have been published in books and in journals like Il Bianco e il Nero and Le Simplegadi of the University of Udine, Italy and her poems in Bells of the University of Barcelona, in The Atlantic Literary Review, The Literary Criterion, The Critical Endeavour, India. Her published books include The Silent Cry, The Endangered Self (co-author with S Ramaswamy), Three Sides of Life. She has worked on a project on Partnership Studies in World Literatures Written in English for the University of Udine and her article on 'The Feminine Divine: Partnership Studies in the works of Toni Morrison and Mahasweta Devi,' published in the ensuing Conference proceedings at Udine, 2007. She has worked for a Translation project for the British Council and the University of Warwick. Her current work focuses mainly on the Goddess and on Comparative Studies of Folklore.
Subhash Chandra, formerly Reader in English at Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, is currently teaching in the Department of English, University of Delhi, as Visiting Faculty. He is the author of The Fiction of J.D. Salinger: A Study in the Concept of Man (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2000) and editor of Thomas Hardy: A Collection of Critical Essays (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1999), Mohan Rakesh's Halfway House: Critical Perspectives (New Delhi: Asia Book Club 2001) and Lesbian Voices: Canada and the World: Theory, Literature, Cinema (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 2006). He has also published several articles in critical anthologies and research journals, his latest being 'A Multiniched Haven: Lesbianism and Canadian Cultural Pluralism,' in an edited volume Canada Exposed, published in Ottawa, Canada. He has presented papers at national and international conferences and seminars in Australia, Israel, Hong Kong, Nepal and Canada and at various universities in India, in addition to delivering lectures at Refresher Courses. As a recipient of a Shastri Indo-Canadian Fellowship, he worked on a post-doctoral project on Multiculturalism and the Print Media in Canada at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Niladri R. Chatterjee is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Kalyani, West Bengal, India. A recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Texas at Austin and the British Council Charles Wallace Fellowship to Downing College, Cambridge, Mr. Chatterjee regularly publishes on twentieth century fiction. His current area of interest is the literary representation of the post-colonial queer. His publications include an entry on Mulk Raj Anand in Reader's Companion to 20th Century Writers (London: Fourth Estate, Helicon, 1995), an entry on Nirad C. Chaudhuri in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), and an interview with the artist Don Bachardy in The Isherwood Century: Essays on the Life and Work of Christopher Isherwood (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000). He is also a co-editor of The Muffled Heart: Stories of the Disempowered Male (New Delhi: Rupa, 2005), a volume of Indian short stories translated from various languages. He has recently joined the editorial board of American Notes and Queries.
Vibha S. Chauhan is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Zakir Husain College, University of Delhi, India. Her major research interests include studies in literature, culture and society of non-urban society in India. She has published articles in national and international journals mainly on the continuation of social categories like myth and caste within the democratic structure of Indian politics. She authored the monograph Gods People Make (housed by Victoria Memorial Library, London) based on a survey of local deities in rural India and Ganga Jamuna Beech, a novel in Hindi. She co-authored, with Maa Siddeshwari, a biography of the renowned thumri singer Siddeshwari Devi. She also co-edited a textbook for undergraduate students in the University of Delhi Cultural Diversity, entitled Linguistic Plurality and Literary Traditions in India.
Chaity Das's areas of interest are Gender and Trauma studies, Postcolonialism, Violence and Women and Minority Studies. She has completed an M.Phil and is pursuing a Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on the topic 'In the Land of Buried Tongues: Testimonies and Literary Narratives about the War of Liberation of Bangladesh.' She teaches in the Dept of English in Kalindi College, University of Delhi. Chaity has presented papers at national and international seminars and conferences, such as, IAACS at Jaipur, Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi and conducted an interview of Qurratulain Hyder, the well known Indian woman fiction writer which was published in JSL in 2008. She collaborated in the scripting of No Motive (62 mins), a short film directed by Rajiv Aricat and produced by Rajakrishnan PR as part of the M.Phil Course 'Interpretation of Texts.' She has also published a selection of poems in the online journal Muse India, 2006. Alternative email address: Chaity Das.
Assa Doron is a research fellow in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU. Over the past decade he has conducted research in North India, focusing on ritual economies, identity politics and development amongst the low castes in the city of Varanasi (Banaras). His most recent work investigates the cultural politics of marginalised sections of Indian society, especially amongst the Most Backward Castes, and their efforts to inscribe themselves into the collective narrative of nation-building in modern India. His recent book, entitled, Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges: Passages of Resistance (Ashgate, Surrey 2008), offers a critical appreciation of wider debates pertaining to postcolonial studies, resistance studies, tourism and pilgrimage and the anthropology of the state and development. Some of Doron’s publications include, 'Caste Away: Subaltern Engagement with the Modern Indian State,' in Modern Asian Studies (in press, 2009, Cambridge); 'Ferrying the Gods: the Narrative and Practice of Devotion in the Sacred City of Banaras,' in Sites: a Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (in press, 2009); 'The Needle and the Sword: Boatmen, Priests and the Ritual Economy of Varanasi,' in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, (2006); 'Encountering the 'Other': Pilgrims, Tourists and Boatmen in the City of Varanasi,' in The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2005).
Chandhrika G. is Associate Professor in History in the Pondicherry University, India. Her PhD is in the field of intellectual history of modern India. Subsequently her research has focused on historiographical aspects of south Indian history, the nature of nationalist thought, and the history of women. She has edited and published the book Voicing Gender: Echoes from Canada and India (2002) under the auspices of the Shastri Indo Canadian Studies, New Delhi and is currently engaged in co-editing a book entitled Women's Issues in India for the Centre for Women's Studies in the Pondicherry University.
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Alabama. Her research focuses on the construction of authority and empiricism in the Tibetan cultural sphere as presented in traditional genres of Tibetan historiographical literature, particularly biographical and genealogical texts, and the relationship between gender, religion and authority in Tibetan, Chinese and Himalayan societies. She has previously published on Tibetan biographical and historical literature and Himalayan borderland history between Tibet, Sikkim, Bhutan, Ladakh and Nepal.
Anna Husson Isozaki (BA Mount Holyoke, MA University of Sheffield) is an instructor in the Department of International Communications at Gunma Women's Prefectural University. She is co-translator of two full-length novels: Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe, a paranormal suspense thriller touching on women in Japan and the nature of justice (Kodansha International 2005), and Beyond the Blossoming Fields, by Junichi Watanabe, a biographical novel of the life of Japan's first woman doctor (Alma Books 2008). She is currently editing a feminist novel in translation for J-Lit, the Japan Literature Publishing Project.
Naresh K. Jain is a former Reader in English, School of Correspondence Courses, now re-named School of Open Learning, University of Delhi, and has taught English for over 35 years. He has wide-ranging interests. His publications include: Muslims in India: A Biographical Dictionary (in 2 volumes) (1979 and 1983); Love in Modern American Drama (1991); and (edited) Women in Indo-Anglian Fiction: Tradition and Modernity (1998). He has written monographs on Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge; The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Tamas by Bhisham Sahni for M.A. students of Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi. He is also interested in Indian Literature in English translation and has helped edit a course on the subject for IGNOU. His more recent interests are folklore, particularly love legends, and dalit literature. He has completed a study of 'Women, Love and Death in Selected Indian Love Legends,' which is awaiting publication. He is an avid translator and his translation of stories of a top Hindi dalit writer, Omprakash Valmiki, has been published under the title Amma and Other Stories (2008). He has also translated fifty Maithili folk songs on the river Kosi, known as 'the Sorrow of Bihar' into English.
Joya John completed her MPhil in English Literature, from Delhi University in 2004. She has since then taught English Literature in various colleges in Delhi University. Currently she teaches in Gargi College, where she is also the staff advisor of the Gargi College, Street Play Society. Her academic interests include minority literatures, specifically Dalit literatures from various parts of India and she has published two articles on the same. She has also written and presented papers on various issues related to women and law in India. Joya is a columnist and writes articles on cultural spaces, public and private domains and a broad range of issues that feed into cultural and media studies for the e-zine StageBuzz. She has also adapted two street plays for performance in Delhi University. The first being 'Maahol Badalna Hai,' a Saheli play, on sexual harassment in the workplace and the second a JANAM play on DTC buses and the problems of public transport in Delhi specifically for women.
Akhil Katyal recently shifted to London to begin his PhD at SOAS, University of London on queerness and self-writing in India. For the last three years he was a part of the queer cultural activist collective 'Nigah' in Delhi. He finished his Bachelors and Masters in Literature at Hindu College and St. Stephens College, both at Delhi University. His articles on queer activism, art of nomenclature and pedagogy have featured in journals like JSL, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Correspondence and with publishers like Routledge and Yoda. He blogs at Akhil Katyal Poetry.

Malashri Lal is the Joint Director of the University of Delhi, South Campus and a Professor in the Department of English. She has also served as the Director of the Women's Studies & Development Centre of the same University, and guided teaching and research, documentation, gender sensitisation, and faculty enrichment programmes. With a specialisation in literary studies, Malashri Lal has written and lectured extensively on women's socio-cultural positioning and women's writing. As a recipient of several fellowships from the Fulbright, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Shastri-Indo Canadian Institute and the British Council, she has conducted research in prestigious institutions including Harvard University, USA, and Bellagio, Italy. Malashri Lal has authored The Law of the Threshold: Women Writers in Indian English (1995, reprinted 2000), and coedited Interpreting Homes in South Asian Literature (2007) and The Indian Family in Transition (2008). Her most recent work is a co-edited volume, Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women's Writing, published by Penguin India (2009).

Anupama Mohan is a Doctoral candidate in English and South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Her thesis entitled 'The Country and the Village: Representations of the Rural in Twentieth century South Asian writing' examines the village as a literary trope in the works of Indian writers influenced by Gandhi's vision of the village, and the rural as it is re-imagined in Sri Lankan writers writing back to Leonard Woolf's influential 1919 novel The Village in the Jungle. She was awarded Distinction in Master of Philosophy in English from the University of Delhi in 2002. She is also a poet and her debut volume of poetry, Twenty Odd Love Poems, was published in 2008. Her research interests include literary theory, feminist literature, Shakespeare, and cultural ethnography in general. She has also taught for four years at the University of Delhi as a Lecturer in English.
Sonali Pattnaik currently teaches literature in English to undergraduate students at the department of English, Kirori Mal College, Delhi University. She completed an M.Phil in English with a first division with distinction from Delhi University in 2006 and she has read research papers at various international seminars throughout India on topics such as the mutiny of 1857, physiognomy and colonial ethnography, gender and representations of the body, especially within the colonial context. Her research interests are primarily centered on post-colonial theory and gender studies. She is particularly interested in the formulation of gender-based identity through the body and the representation of the human body in art and literature. Her articles on cinema have appeared in the online news magazine Tehelka and she has contributed articles to The Narratives of Indian Cinema, ed. Manju Jain, PRIMUS Books, Delhi 2009 and Word, Image, Text; Studies in Literary and Visual Culture, ed. Shormistha Panja et. al., Orient Blackswan, New Delhi, 2009.
Namita Paul is Assistant Professor in the department of English in Kamala Nehru College, Delhi University. She completed her M.Phil from the department of English, Delhi University in 2006. Her research interests include Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Queer Theory and Film Studies. She is currently working on the representations of queerness in popular Indian cinema and has published and presented papers on this topic. She is also working with the Institute of Life Long Learning, Delhi University to create online lessons and resources for students of film and literature in the University.
Suddhaseel Sen is completing his doctoral dissertation on cross-cultural adaptations of Shakespeare into Opera and Film, at the University of Toronto. His academic interests include European and Indian literature from the nineteenth century onwards, adaptation studies, and the interrelations between literature, music and film. He has published on Richard Wagner and T.S. Eliot, and has forthcoming articles on song settings of Rabindranath Tagore by western composers, Vishal Bhardwaj's cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare, Maqbool, and Ambroise Thomas' operatic adaptation of Hamlet. His arrangements of the music of Rabindranath Tagore for voices and western instruments have been performed by professional ensembles in India and Canada.

Rajesh Kumar Sharma teaches literature and theory in the Department of English, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab (India). He did his PhD on feminism and the writings of Kamala Das. Later he worked on a major project, Transforming Subjectivities: Studies in Literature and Philosophy, for the University Grants Commission. He has published papers on Indian literature, literary theory, cinema, technology, politics, education, and philosophy. He loves to translate, especially poetry, from Punjabi and Hindi to English. He blogs erratically at kriticulture.blogspot.com.

Subhash Chandra Verma is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Government Post Graduate College, Rudrapur (U.S. Nagar) 263153, Uttrakhand, India. He completed his Ph.D. from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Agra in 2004. His research interests include the socio-cultural study of the Tharu tribe of India. He is currently working on a research project on awareness among the youth of Tharu Tribes of India. He has been continuously engaged in research on Tharu and Buksa tribes since 1999. He published a book on the Tharu Tribal community (in Hindi) in 2008 and has presented papers on this tribe. He collaborates with a German NGO, the International Institute for Promotion of the Development of Youth,' for study and research on Indian tribal youth. He is guiding research and two research scholars are working on Tharu and Buksa tribes for their Ph.D. degrees in Kumaun University Nainital (India). He has presented research papers on Tharu and Buksa tribal communities at international conferences in the USA, Canada, China, Philippines, Korea and France. More information can be found on his own webpage.


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Published with the support of the Gender Relations Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.
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