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Fulbright Scholar Sunjakta Dasgupta reads from her poetry at the Women’s Connections event Oct. 12. |
Sanjukta Dasgupta, a Fulbright Scholar in Residence
from India, is teaching, sharing knowledge and creating
connections at SUNY Oswego this fall.
Through her residency, a joint effort of the college
and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars
(which administers the Fulbright program), Dasgupta
teaches "Literature in the Global Context"
and "Vision and Textuality." The latter concerns
Indian women in Indian films, both residents and expatriates,
and "what are their priorities, perspectives and
techniques, and how they are responding to the same
historical content" as male filmmakers, she said.
"What has been very exciting to me is the opportunity
to interact with students directly in the classroom,"
said Dasgupta, a professor at the University of Calcutta
and former head of its English department. Many of her
visits to other campuses have been more formal, involving
presentations at seminars and conferences. "Students
have been part of the audience then, but interacting
with them has not been as dynamic as teaching courses
at SUNY Oswego," she said.
Dasgupta's books include The
Novels of Huxley and Hemingway: A Study in Two Planes
of Reality, and poetry compilations such as Dilemma
and First Language.
She edited Her Stories,
translations of short stories by Bengali women writers,
which also features introductions and interviews she
conducted with the authors.
"In these stories, I very specifically tried to
move away from the helplessness and abject condition
of Indian women as represented in previous fiction and
tried to bring together in one volume stories that feature
Indian women as active agents of social change,"
she explained.
She is editor of "Families," a Fulbright Alumni
Initiative project journal launched in 2002. Selections
from that journal and additional commissioned work will
comprise Indian Families in
Transition: Reading, Literary and Cultural Texts,
a forthcoming book from Sage Publications.
Dasgupta's semester in Oswego came at the encouragement
of a fellow Fulbright Scholar, Geraldine Forbes, distinguished
teaching professor in history at Oswego. Forbes, whose
specialties include women's studies in India, first
met Dasgupta at a conference in North Carolina and has
contributed to the "Families" journal.
"I think she's an ideal person to come here because
she does so many different things," Forbes said
of Dasgupta. "She's well-versed in American literature
as well as Indian women writers."
Forbes said the timing also works well, given the increasing
interest in ties between the United States and India.
She noted that SUNY Oswego is offering its first course
in Hindi, which filled up quickly, and that the corporate
world is trying to strengthen ties with the Asian subcontinent.
Dasgupta also has made connections with the greater
community, including giving readings at the River's
End Bookstore and Oswego Art Association gallery in
Oswego and speaking at Onondaga Community College.
"I feel that from my interaction and contacts here,
we can engage in collaborative work that will enhance
cultural understanding and academic participation,"
Dasgupta said. |
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