The Department of English We Are All Mad Here (Then Again, Who’s Sane?) Ms. Vidya Das Arora joined the Department of English, Gargi College in 1980 and is Associate Professor of English. Her areas of specialization include Elizabethan & Jacobean Drama, Modern Theatre & Performance, Critical Theory, 1960s and 1970s Pop Culture, and World Cinema. She has published many research papers and articles in reputed journals. Over the years, she has been actively involved in hosting and organizing seminars and conferences in the college on subjects like Religion and Politics, Media and Politics, the Renaissance, The Novel Form, The Idea of the Medieval, Women and Legal Rights, Sexual Harassment, Marxism, and New Wave Cinema/Theatre and Western Music. She has also organized International Conferences on “The Imaging of Women in Myth and History” and “Nationalism”, “Literature After World War II”, and “Integrating Knowledge” to name a few. When you get to spend time with her though, she makes you think of Buster Keaton-guess why. Dr. Radharani Chakravarty, writer, academic, translator, literary critic, and a veritable Tagore scholar has worked at Gargi since 1991 and is an Associate Professor of English and is currently on lien. Her areas of specialization are Translation, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Contemporary Literature, Postcolonial Literature, and Tagore. Any student who has had the pleasure of studying under her can vouch for her adoration of Rabindranath Tagore, which she subtly weaves into all her lectures. We would love to put in everything she’s written and published so we can make ourselves look good but we’ll have to allot our funds to doing just that! Dr. Anjana Neira Dev is Associate Professor of English at Gargi. In addition to teaching literature and language to English majors, she also teaches courses on Academic Writing, Business Communication, Technical Writing and Creative Writing, to students majoring in other disciplines. Her research interests include Indian Writing in English, Popular Literature (Detective Fiction), Women’s Writing, Creative Writing, Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages and, English for Special Purposes. Her “ten-minute rule” strikes fear into the hearts of the students who scramble as fast as their little feet can carry them in order to reach class on time. Her inspiring and engaging lectures are, however, completely worth the lightning-fast sprints to class! There is no party without her here! Ms. Pragya Gupta is Assistant Professor of English. Students consider her the “Wonder Woman of Medieval Texts” because of her wonderful classroom lectures and open-ended discussions. Her fun-loving nature and cheerful attitude are what make students eagerly look forward to her classes. She has been actively involved in many cultural activities in college. She has been the Convener of Quilluminati, the English Creative Writing Society since its inception in 2013, and convened QED-the English Debating Society before that from 2006 to 2008. She has been a part of the Department Association for the last four years and was also on the editorial board of the college magazine, Logos, in 2014. Her areas of interest include Post-Colonial Literatures, Women’s Self Fashioning, and Popular Fiction. If you haven’t already guessed from the photo, she is the Absent Minded Professor of our Department and the current TIC. Vol 1.1
67
Bitacora
