SUBARNO CHATTARJI, Professor, DPhil (Oxon.)

Subarno Chattarji, Professor
Telephone No: 0129-4117905
E-mail: chattarji_s@yahoo.com
Preferred Contact hours: By Appointment

DPhil (Oxon 1999), MPhil (Delhi 1991), MA (Delhi 1988), BA (Delhi 1986)

Biography

My research centred around and continues to focus on literary representations of the Vietnam War. While my first book, Memories of a Lost War, dealt with American poetic responses to the war, my most recent work, The Distant Shores of Freedom, focuses on Vietnamese-American memorializations of that conflict. I am fascinated by the ways in which this body of immigrant/exile writing reconfigures Vietnam from predominantly conservative American points of view while attempting to recuperate specifically South Vietnamese histories. I have also researched on aspects of English Studies in India.

Areas of interest/research

Nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction and poetry.

American and Vietnamese representations of the Vietnam/American War and its aftermath.

The Vietnamese refugee and immigrant experience in America.

English Studies in India

Courses Taught

American Literature

Honours, Awards, Appointments:

Academic Writing Residency, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy, 2017.

Kluge Postdoctoral Fellow, Library of Congress, 2008-2009.

Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship, La Salle University, Philadelphia, 2004-2005.

Radhakrishnan Memorial Bequest, University of Oxford, 1998.

Wolfson College Graduate Award, 1996-1998.

Overseas Research Students Award, University of Oxford, 1995-98.

Felix Scholarship, University of Oxford, 1995-98.

Representative Publications

‘“Writing about War”: Dương Thu Hương’s Representations of the Vietnam-American War.’ Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], vol. 20-n°53 | 2022, http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/14228

The Distant Shores of Freedom: Vietnamese American Memoirs and Fiction. New Delhi, New York, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Co-author with Suman Gupta, Richard Allen, and Supriya Chaudhuri, Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education. London: Routledge, 2015.

‘Poetry by American women veterans.’ Alea: Estudos Neolatinos, Vol. 16, # 2 (July-Dec 2014), pp. 300-316.

‘”The Chameleon War”: Passing Time and the remembrance of the Vietnam War.’ In The Last Time I Dreamed About the War: Essays on the Life and Writings of W D Ehrhart, edited, Jean-Jacques Malo (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc.2014), pp. 22-30

“Culture(s) of corruption”: media representations and anxieties.’ In Covering and Explaining Conflict in Civil Society, edited, Nalini Rajan (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2014), pp. 91-103.

Edited, with Sevani Ninan, The Hoot Reader: Media Practice in Twenty-first Century India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013.

The New Americans”: the creation of a typology of Vietnamese-American identity in children’s literature.’ Journal of American Studies (Cambridge University Press). Volume 44, Number 2 (May 2010), pp. 409-428.

Edited, with Tapan Basu and Suman Gupta, Globalization in India: Contents and Discontents. New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2009.

Tracking the media: interpretations of mass media discourses in India and Pakistan. New Delhi and London: Routledge, 2008.

‘Imagining Vietnam: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.’ In The United States and the Legacy of the Vietnam War, edited, Jon Roper (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 72-88.

Edited, with Gautam Chakravarty, An Anthology of Indian Prose Writings in English. New Delhi: Penguin, 2004.

Memories of a Lost War: American poetic responses to the Vietnam War. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Conference/Talks

‘English Studies in India: Some Reflections.’ Inaugural Lecture. 75 Years of India’s Independence: Cultural Refractions, Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University. 27 July 2021. [By invitation]

‘“Gooks, go home!” Vietnamese in the United States.’ Affective Publics Lecture Series, Freie Universität Berlin. 25 June 2021. https://vimeo.com/577674011/541d946180 [By invitation]

‘“Paradise of the Blind”: Dương Thu Hương’s representations of the Vietnam/American War.’ International Virtual Conference on ‘Sharing War Memories – From the Military to the Civilian.’ Le Mans University, France. 22-24 June 2021.

‘“Throwaway People”: Memory and Trauma in Memoirs by Vietnamese American Women.’ War Memories International Symposium on ‘Celebrations, Reconstructions, Representations and War Narratives in the English-Speaking World (18th to 21st Centuries).’ Royal Military College, Canada. 12-14 June 2018.

‘Aftermaths of the Vietnam War.’ Public lecture at Universita Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy. 1 December 2017. [By invitation]

‘The American Dream.’ Lecture at the Institute of Life Long Learning (ILLL), University of Delhi. 24 August 2014. English VLDr Subarno Chattarji