I am a scholar of South Asian visual culture, literary and cultural criticism, and postcolonial studies. My work explores the politicization of popular literature, storytelling, and history recording in British India. I am interested in studying literary and visual genres printed in periodicals that shaped colonial modernity and historiography. My articles and book reviews have appeared in Victorian Studies, Victorian Periodicals Review, South Asia,The International Journal of Comic Art, ImageText, Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture, and South Asian Review.

I am currently an Early Career Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS), at Columbia University. I received my doctoral degree in South Asian Studies and Comparative Literature from MESAAS, Columbia University.

My essay, “Against Imitation: Anticolonial Caricatures in Basantak or the Bengali Punch,” is the Winner of 2022 Research Society for Victorian Periodicals’ Expanding the Field Prize. The article was published in the Victorian Periodicals Review, Spring 2023.

I am the recipient of Columbia University’s 2024 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching and Teacher’s Scholars Program Fellowship for the Academic year 2023-24.

Currently, I serve on the Organizing Committee of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP), where we host book promotion events, organize conferences, hold reading groups, and invite graduate students and scholars researching Victorian Periodicals for monthly lecture series.

In 2023, along with six other colleagues (professors and post-doctoral fellows), I have established ‘The Empire and Colonialism Caucus’ at NAVSA (North Atlantic Victorian Studies Association), centering around Bengali-Urdu-Hindu-language print culture dedicated to studying the remnants of Victorian-Indian print networks. The caucus is a network of interdisciplinary scholars working on nineteenth-century empire and literature. The caucus is an effort to broaden the field of Victorian Studies by focusing on non-British cultural producers, historical subjects, and perspectives on literature and imperial histories. We offer scholars and students contexts, networks, and spaces to connect, eventually leading to conference panels, symposia, special issues, and peer mentoring. 

Education:

Ph.D., Columbia University, MESAAS, 2024
M.Phil., Columbia University, MESAAS, 2020
M.A., Columbia University, MESAAS, 2018
M.Phil., Jadavpur University, Comparative Literature 2017
M.A., Jadavpur University, English, 2015
B.A., St. Xavier’s College, University of Calcutta, English (First Class, Honors), 2013