IRA RAJA, Professor, PhD (LaTrobe)

Ira Raja, Professor
e-mail: iraraja@gmail.com
Office No: Room no, 44, Arts Faculty, North Campus
Meeting hours: Tuesday (North Campus) 1.30 to 2.30 and Thursday (South Campus) 1.30 to 2.30.

PhD (La Trobe 2003), M.Phil (Delhi 1996), MA (Delhi 1992), BA (Delhi 1990)

Areas of interest/research

Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Cosmopolitanism, Globalisation Studies, Twentieth Century Novel and Poetry, Dalit literature, Indian Literature in English Translation, Literary Gerontology, Urban Cultures

Courses taught

New Literatures in English (MA)

Perspectives on Indian Literature in English Translation (MA)

Modern Indian Writing (MA)

Postcolonial Theory: An Introduction (M.Phil)

Globalization, Cosmopolitanism and the Postcolonial Novel (M.Phil)

Imagined States (M.Phil)

Honours, awards, appointments

1 Sept 2008 – 31 Aug 2011: La Trobe University Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 2008.

1 Mar – 30 June 2008: Endeavour Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Research, Australia.

Jan 1997 to Mar 2002: Australian Development Co-operation Scholarship (ADCOS) for Doctoral Research.

Editorial Board, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2012 –

Editorial Board, Thesis Eleven Journal of Cultural Sociology, 2008-

Associate Editor, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2011-

Associate Editor, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2005-2008.

Poetry Editor, Postcolonial Text (www.postcolonial.org), 2006-2010.

Representative publications

EDITED ANTHOLOGIES & JOURNAL ISSUES

Grey Areas: An Anthology of Contemporary Indian Fiction on Ageing, Delhi: OUP, 2010.

An Endless Winter’s Night: Mother-Daughter Narratives from India, (with Kay Souter), Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2010.

The Table is Laid: Oxford Anthology of South Asian Food Writing, (with John Thieme), Delhi: OUP, 2007.

Thesis Eleven, 105 (2011) special issue on ‘Australia-India Traffic – Movements, Cities, Knowledge’ (with Trevor Hogan.)

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Special Issue: Family Ties: Security, Sexuality and Socialization in Indian Families, 36.1 (Jan. 2013).

Thesis Eleven 111 (2012) Special Issue: Popular Print and Visual Cultures in India (with Trevor Hogan)

JOURNAL ARTICLES

‘Can the Subaltern Eat? Modernity, Masculinity and Consumption in the Indian Family’, South Asian History and Culture, Sp Issue on Gender and Masculinities: New Perspectives, ed. Assa Doron and Alex Broom, 4.2 (2013): 278-290.

‘The Unruly City: Signboards, Streets and Democratic Spaces’, co-authored with Ken Botnick, Thesis Eleven: Cultural Theory and HIstorical Sociology 113 (2012): 94-111.

‘Contractarianism and the Ethic of Care in Indian Fiction’, South Asia 36.1 (2013): 108-126.

‘Subtle Technology: The Design Innovation of Indian Artisanship,’ co-authored with Ken Botnick Design Issues 27. 4 (2011): 43-55.

‘Rethinking Relationality in the Context of Adult Mother-Daughter Caregiving in Indian Fiction’, Journal of Aging, Humanities and the Arts 3.1 (2009): 25-37.

‘Mothering Siblings: Desire, Diaspora and Identity in “American Born Confused Desi”’, co-authored with Kay Souter Narrative, the Journal of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, 16.1 (2008): 16–28.

‘Embodied History: Intergenerational Conflict in Indian Fiction’, Commonwealth Essays and Studies 27.2 (2005): 7–23.

‘Ageing Subjects, Agentic Bodies: Appetite, Modernity and the Middle Class in Two Indian Short Stories in English’, Journal of Commonwealth  Literature, 40.1 (2005): 73–89.

‘Signifying the Nation: Identity, Authenticity and the Ageing Body in the post-Independence Hindi short story’ Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 39.3 (2004): 25–43.

‘Desiring Daughters: Intergenerational Connectedness in Recent Indian Fiction’ Women’s Studies, an inter-disciplinary journal , 32.7 (2003): 853–74. 

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

Rpr. in Short Story Criticism (2012), ‘Embodied History: Intergenerational Conflict in Indian Fiction’, Commonwealth Essays and  Studies, 27.2 (2005): 7–23.

With Terry Collits, “Conrad’s Chinese:  Orientalism, Eurocentrism, Racism“,  p.239-262, in Joseph Conrad and the Orient, ed Amar Acheraiou and Nursel Icoz Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives, vol.21 –  East European Monographs, Boulder; Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Press, Lublin, 2012.

With Phillip Darby, ‘Australia and India’, in Sociology: Antipodean   Perspectives (eds) Peter Beilharz and Trevor Hogan, South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 187-192.

With Deepika Bahri, ‘Postcolonial Literature: Key Journal and Institutions’, Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, ed. Ato Quayson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. pp. 1155-1188. 

‘New Literatures: The Indian Subcontinent and Sri Lanka’, The Year’s Work in  English Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 994-1004.

‘New Literatures: The Indian Subcontinent and Sri Lanka’, The Year’s Work in  English Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp.1075-1095.

‘Introduction: Narratives of Ageing’, Grey Areas: An Anthology of  Contemporary Indian Fiction on Ageing, ed. Ira Raja, Delhi: OUP,  2010, pp.13-31.

With Kay Souter, ‘Introduction’, An Endless Winter’s Night: Mother-Daughter Stories from India, Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2010, pp. 11-31.

With John Thieme, Introduction, The Table is Laid: Oxford Anthology of South Asian Food Writing, ed. John Thieme and Ira Raja (Delhi: OUP, 2006), pp.17–55.

TRANSLATIONS

‘Libations’, translation of Usha Yadav’s short story, ‘Tarpan’, in The Lotus Singers: Stories from Contemporary South Asia, ed. Trevor Carolan,  Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2011, pp. 191-199.

‘Disgrace’, translation of Swami Wahid Kazmi’s short story ‘Lanat’, in Reading and Reality: Literature and Contemporary Issues, ed. Malini Seshadri and Hema Nair, Delhi: OUP, 2010.

Preetish Acharya’s short story ‘Order Cancel’, in The Table is Laid: Oxford Anthology of South Asian Food Writing, ed. Ira Raja and John Thieme  Delhi: OUP, 2006.

Extracts from the Dalit writer Kausalya Baisantri’s autobiographical novel Dohra Abhishap (Twice Cursed, 1999), in The Table is Laid: Oxford Anthology of South Asian Food Writing, ed. Ira Raja and John Thieme, Delhi: OUP, 2006.

REVIEWS (most recent)

Review of Nandini Chatterjee’s The Making of a Secular India: Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830–1960 in Contemporary South Asia 20.2 (2012):276-277.