Shuhita
Bhattacharjee
Assistant Professor of English Literature and Gender & Sexuality Studies, Department of Liberal Arts;
Affiliated Professor of Design, Department of Design;
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
Across my years of research and teaching in USA and India, my interests have been in the areas of Victorian Literature and Culture, Postsecular Theory, Studies on Religion and Secularism, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Queer Theory, Postcolonial Studies, Posthuman Theory, Cultural Studies, Thing Theory, Literature and Cinema of the Diaspora, South Asian Literature and Culture Graphic Novels, Popular Literature and Culture, New Woman Literature, Discourses of the Hijab, and Anglo-Indian Literature.
A significant aim of my first monograph is to complicate the predominant geopolitical assumption of a modern 'crisis of faith' and 'decline' of religiosity. I am currently at work on my second monograph in which I examine the representations of colonial idols in fin-de-siècle literature and culture. A particular interest area is the notion of dark humour and subalterity in contemporary cultural discourses and performances. Several concurrent projects on graphic novels and on diasporic literature and cinema continue to engage me.
My current projects include polishing the final drafts of my second monograph and spearheading the Nineteenth-Century Diversities Research Network (NCDRN), South Asia Chapter, from IIT Hyderabad, as a partner network of the UK Victorian Diversities Network, and funded by a UKRI AHRC Grant. This is a major hybrid research network in progress that I envision as a platform for all nineteenth-century scholars who work from or on South Asia and wish to participate in international collaborations and conversations that bypass issues of access.
Alongside my academic interests, I have worked extensively in the social sector at national and international levels in areas such as violence against HIV-positive women, sex education, and workplace anti- sexual harassment laws in educational institutions. This has in many ways shaped the core of my identity as a socially conscious academic and has contributed both to the pedagogical and the administrative techniques that I employ in institutions of higher learning. An active classroom, dedicated to changing delimiting socio-cultural narratives, and a program of scholarly training, invested in the joys of the archive, form the centrepiece of my pedagogical and supervisory approach.
Alongside my academic interests, I have worked extensively in the social sector at national and international levels in areas such as violence against HIV-positive women, sex education, and workplace anti- sexual harassment laws in educational institutions. This has in many ways shaped the core of my identity as a socially conscious academic and has contributed both to the pedagogical and the administrative techniques that I employ in institutions of higher learning. An active classroom, dedicated to changing delimiting socio-cultural narratives, and a program of scholarly training, invested in the joys of the archive, form the centrepiece of my pedagogical and supervisory approach.
PROJECTS ON MY TABLE
Books
Postsecular Theory: Texts and Contexts. Orient Blackswan (Literary/Cultural Theory Series), 2023.
[The book has been reviewed in Victoriographies: A Journal of the Long Nineteenth Century (Volume 14 Issue 3, Page 282-284, ISSN 2044-2416; Available Online Oct 2024; Michelle Taylor) The Times Group Bengali daily, Ei Samay (5 March 2023), and Economic and Political Weekly (forthcoming).]
Colonial Idols in British and Anglo-Indian Literature: Religion and the Non-Human in Postcolonial Culture. [Monograph, Forthcoming from Routledge, USA]
HIV and Violence Against Women: A Study. ActionAid Kolkata,
India, 2008. [Co-author]
Edited Volumes/Journals
Guest Editor of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. "(Un)disciplining Within the Nineteenth Century: Historical Hybridity in Self-Reflexive Writing by Women." Summer 2024. Joint Editor, Michelle M. Taylor.
Postsecular Theory: Texts and Contexts. Orient Blackswan (Literary/Cultural Theory Series), 2023
Of particular relevance in the current global political climate, this volume reviews and investigates 'Postsecular Theory' as a well- established field of critical inquiry. It discusses the complexity of arguing for faith's centrality to human experience at a time when institutionalized faith systems are barraging human rights frameworks around the world. The book examines how the historical lineage of these injustices can be traced all the way back not to religion but to Western colonialist commercial hegemonies. It models at length what postsecular literary analyses may look like with respect to works from the long nineteenth and twenty first centuries.
Launch of the Public Humanities Initiative (PHI) at IIT Hyderabad:
With funding support from Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), the PHI was launched at IIT Hyderabad under the leadership of Shuhita Bhattacharjee. The PHI will be a hub of public-facing humanities research that will bring together and facilitate significant ventures directed at a more inclusive and just public sphere. Students and faculty from the humanities (and social sciences) will explore projects that are aimed at crucial and necessary socio-institutional changes along the vectors of gender, health, pedagogy, medicine, law etc. The launch event showcased how research needs to be multifaceted and public-facing, and how this needs to bring together academics, artists, designers, curators, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, activists, ecologists etc in a collective conceptualization of a more equitable and sensitized society. Located in a tech school, the value of a PH initiative becomes manifold as it often involves convincing the wide swathe of students and faculty about the kind of society-facing research that defines our careers and value systems.
The launch event showcased public-facing research undertaken by students of humanities, social sciences, artists, and designers through a scintillating art corridor (the PHI Art Arcade).
Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) Major Research Grant: Adolescent Sexuality Education through Picture Books
The rseaecrh team is working on designing picture books for adolescent SexEducation modules. The picture books will address child sexual abuse withfocus on the less explored aspects: incest abuse, intimate partner violence,and online sexual abuse. The picture books will include LGBTQIA+ templatesof sexual desire/relationships in their representation. The texts will aim at afuller discussion of sexual rights/consent/safety for persons of all genderidentities and sexual orientations, in a context-specific way.The field work is located in Hyderabad but teacher/doctor/counselorinterviews are wider in range, including both domestic and internationalexperts.
Upcoming monograph
Colonial Idols in British and Anglo-Indian Literature:
Religion and the Non-Human in Postcolonial Culture
(Routledge)
This monograph deals with the representation of colonial idols in fin-de-siècle British and Anglo-Indian fiction (1880- 1914) examining works by a whole range of authors including Richard Marsh, Rudyard Kipling, Victoria Cross, and Alice Perrin. I examine fin-de- siècle fiction and archival material to understand how the figure of the colonial idol, alive with anon-human destructive/miraculous agency- and portrayed in theirnonhumanness variously as objects, machines, automatons, religious devices, exhibitable freaks, and animals-ultimately debunk the West's self-assurance about its normative ‘human'-ity and about a consistent 'crisis of faith'.
UKRI AHRC Research Grant: Establishing Nineteenth-Century Diversities Research Network (NCDRN)
Shuhita Bhattacharjee, as lead coordinator from Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, joins Eadaoin Agnew (Kingston University, UK) in receiving the prestigious UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council(AHRC) research grant for the establishment and strengthening of global nineteenth-century research networks. With the Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad, as the India project partner, Shuhita Bhattacharjee will be spearheading the setting up of a virtual Nineteenth-Century Diversities Research Network (NCDRN), South Asia Chapter, from IIT Hyderabad as a research network that mobilizes and connects academics and students working in the area of nineteenth-century studies for discussions, collaborations, projects, and grants.
An international symposium supported by the UKRI, and organized collaboratively by IIT Hyderabad and Kingston University, will mark the inauguration of the NCDRN, South Asia Chapter. The event will be held on 8-9 January 2026.
PUBLICATIONS
Article/ Book Chapters
“The Insurgent Invasion of Anti-Colonial Idols in Late-Victorian Literature: Richard Marsh and F. Anstey.” English Literature in Transition. 61.1 (Jan 2018).
“Relocating Home and Diasporising the South Asian Queer in Divakaruni and Patil.” In Beyond Trishanku: Diaspora Poetics and Homing in South Asian Women’s Writing. Edited by Shilpa Daithota Bhat. Lanham, Boulder, New York and London: Lexington Books, 2018.
“Of Mahatmas and Chelas: Theosophy and the 'Cartography of the Supernatural' in Richard Marsh and F. Anstey.” In Victorian Popular Fictions Journal. 1.2 (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.46911/ZWIS2654
“The Colonial Idol, the Animalistic, and the New Woman in the Imperial Gothic of Richard Marsh.” In Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out. Edited by Ruth Heholt and Melissa Edmundson. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34540-2_15
“'Not a muscle at my command': Mesmeric Trance, Consent, and #MeToo in Richard Marsh." Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. 16.2 (2020).
“Reimagining Reluctance: The South-Asian Diaspora and Global ‘Homing’ in Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.” In Diasporic Inquiries into South Asian Women's Narratives: Alien Domiciles. Edited by Shilpa Daithota Bhat. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2020.
“Shockwaves of Rape and Shattering of Power in the Contemporary Indian Web-Series: The Case of Delhi Crime, Made in Heaven, and Judgement Day.” In The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves. Edited by Ana Falcato and Sara Graça da Silva. Lisbon: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_6
“Dark Humour and the Female Performance of Subversion in South- Asian Diaspora Cinema: Chadha’s Rich Deceiver, It’s A Wonderful Afterlife, and What Do You Call An Indian Woman Who’s Funny?” South Asian Studies. 2022. DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2022.2035085
“‘Rosy Ki Khwaheeshein’: Scripted Romance and Acquaintance Rape in Alankrita Shrivastava's Oeuvre of Female Desire," In Women Filmmakers in Contemporary Hindi Cinema: Looking through their Gaze. Edited by Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10232-5_13
"'A Punch Back, . . . a Contagious Guffaw': Feminist Humor in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and the Professionalization of the Rebellious Laugh." Studies in American Humor. 9.1 (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0031
"Criminal Mesmerism, Culpability, and the Automaton in Richard Marsh," Victorian Automata: Mechanism and Agency in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009110129
“'Ancestral Voices Prophesying War': Investigating the Legacy of the 1947 Partition in the 21st-Century Indian Cultural Imagination of Nuclear War." South Asian Review. 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2277969
[Co-Author Souvik Kar]
"Anger as a feminist instrument of the female superhero in Abhijit Kini’s Angry Maushi trilogy." Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 1–25. 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2024.2378899 [Co-Author Deblina Rout]
"Producing the Vampire: Victorian Afterlives of the 'Un-Dead' and Contemporary Sexual Crime in the Cinema of Anushka Sharma." In Women in Contemporary Indian Films and Media. Edited by Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan. Routledge. 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003583851
Atomic Priesthood(s) and the “Knowing Smirk” of the Wandering Jew in A
Canticle for Leibowitz.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and
Reviews. 1-5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2025.2467169 (Co-Author Souvik Kar)
Encyclopedic entry on ‘Mira Nair.’ Contemporary Literary Criticism. Gale Database. Volume 524. 2024.
Review of Imperial Women Writers in Victorian India: Representing Colonial Life, 1850-1910. In English Literature in Transition. 62.3 (May 2019).
Review of Capital Designs: Australia House and Visions of an Imperial London. By Eileen Chanin. In Victorian Studies. 64.1 (2021).
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND ACADEMIC TRAINING
Professional Experience
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Assistant Professor, Department of Liberal Arts (English), IIT Hyderabad (2018-Present)
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Assistant Professor, Department of English, Presidency University, Kolkata, India (2013 - 2018)
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Lecturer for ‘Interpretation of Literature,’ University of Iowa (2009 - 2013)
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Adjunct Professor at HMM College, Calcutta, India (2008 - 2009)
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Research Supervisor in Social Sector Projects (2006 - 2009) [Comprising Academic Research on areas such as HIV & Violence against Women, the Indian National HIV/AIDS Draft Bill, and Adolescent Sex Education]
Academic Training
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PhD English Literature (University of Iowa, USA; 2015)
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MPhil, Masters, and Bachelors in English Literature (Jadavpur University, India; 2008, 2006, 2004)
Invited Talks and Conferences
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Papers presented at Midwest Victorian Studies Association Conference (2021), Victorian Popular Fiction Association Conference, University of Greenwich and Loughborough University (2019, 2022), Kingston University (2023), Baylor University, Texas (2016), Victorians Institute Journal Conference, North Carolina (2015), Midwest Victorian Studies Association Conference, University of Iowa (2015), University of Warwick (2014), University of Portsmouth (2014), University of Ireland, Galway (2014), University of Glasgow (2014)
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Paper presented at the 'Women in Films, Media and Beyond' Conference organized by University of Guelph, Canada, and Indian Institute of Technology Madras (2021)
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Resource Person for the Gender Sensitization Programs and Madan Mohan Malviya 'Higher Education and Society' Faculty Expert (University of Hyderabad, Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Sreenidhi College, IIT Hyderabad; 2019-2023)
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Invited talks for faculty/students/non-teaching staff across higher educational institutions as subject expert and Committee for Gender Concerns member (IIT Hyderabad) on gender-sensitization, socially equitable classroom pedagogies and institutional administration, prevention of sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination (2019-2022)
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Keynote Speaker at the Department of English Conference, Benares Hindu University, Varanasi, India (2018)
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Invited Talks on Humanities, Gender, and Literature in the Modern Age, Government PG College Gopeshwar, Uttarakhand (2020)
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Invited talks on graphic novels at Jadavpur University—SYLFF (Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund of Japan’s Nippon Foundation) (2018)
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Series of invited lectures at Jadavpur University and Presidency University on Victorian Studies (2016)
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Invited lectures at Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad (2020)
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Presentations at Dickens Universe, University of California Santa Cruz (2010) and Midwest Victorian Studies Association Conference, Cleveland (2014)
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Paper presented at the Indian Association of Women’s Studies (IAWS), Lucknow, India, 2008
REVIEWERSHIPS/MEMBERSHIPS
Editorial Boards
Editorial Board Member, Cambridge Elements Series, 'Literature and Religion since 1500' (Cambridge University Press)
Co-Editor, Journal of Victorian Culture (Oxford University Press)
Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (Guest Editor)
Reviewer Boards
Routledge UK
Routledge India
Victorian Studies (Indiana University Press)
PMLA (Modern Language Association of America)
Victorian Network
Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature
Quarterly Review of Film and Video (Taylor and Francis)
Contemporary South Asia (Taylor and Francis)
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's and Gender Studies
Journal of International Women's Studies
Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
Espacio, Tiempo y Educación
Invited Memberships on Panel of Experts
Canada India Research Centre for Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE); University of Guelph, Canada
Religion and Spiritualities Caucus, North American Victorian Studies Association
Proffesional Memberships
Member, Modern Language Association
Member, North American Victorian Studies Association
Member, Victorians Institute
Member, Victorian Popular Fiction Association
Member, Midwest Victorian Studies Association
Member, Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies
Invited Memberships on Panel of Experts
Honours and Awards
Charles Wallace Grant for International Archival Research (2020)
Marcus Bach Fellowship (2015)
Frederick P.W. McDowell Dissertation Award (2014)
Robert L. Platzman Fellowship, University of Chicago (2013)
Stanley Award for International Research, University of Iowa (2013)
Summer Dissertation Fellowship, University of Iowa (2013)
Discussion Leader at the Lumen Christi Institute’s Seminar ("Christianity, the Unity of Knowledge, and the Secularized Academy"), University of Chicago (2013)
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Fellowship, 2014 (As Alternate)
Contact
Email:
shuhitab@gmail.com
shuhita@la.iith.ac.in
Office: Liberal Arts Building, Room LA312
IIT Hyderabad
Academic Projects
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India Coordinator, Research Grant for "Victorian Diversities Research Network", UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 2023 [IIT Hyderabad Partner Organization]; Upcoming UKRI international conference at IIT Hyderabad on 8-9 January 2026 titled "Transnational Encounters in/through South Asia: Victorian Routes of Influence and Affect"
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Founder and Coordinator, Nineteenth-Century Diversities Research Network (NCDRN), South Asia Chapter, 2025
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Founder and Coordinator, Public Humanities Initiative, IIT Hyderabad, 2025
Ongoing
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Principal Investigator, ICSSR Funded Project, "Adolescent Sexual Health Education through Picture Books: Designing and Disseminating Picture Books on Sexual Health---Taking the Conversation to Children, Doctors, Teachers [Ongoing]
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Co-Principal Investigator, ICSSR Funded Project, ‘Intimacy and Risk: Understanding Violence taking place through Queer Dating Applications in Contemporary India’ [Ongoing]
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Founder and Coordinator, Public Humanities Initiative, IIT Hyderabad
Completed
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Violence against Women and HIV/AIDS-I, School of Women’s Studies (Jadavpur University), in collaboration with ActionAid (India); Co-author of the Report (2006-2007)
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Violence Against Women and HIV/AIDS- II: Media Campaigns in West Bengal, School of Women’s Studies (Jadavpur University), in collaboration with ActionAid (India) (2007-2008)
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Gender Politics and the National HIV/AIDS Draft Bill, School of Women’s Studies (Jadavpur University), in collaboration with the National Commission for Women (2007)
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Introduction of Sex Education in the Schools of West Bengal, School of Women’s Studies (Jadavpur University) (2007)
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Chairperson of UNICEF’s Children’s Borough Council set up to conceive, design and execute developmental projects for the children of East India (2001)