Dr. Somjyoti Mridha

Designation: Assistant Professor

Department: English

Qualifications:

MA, MPhil, PhD (JNU)

Areas of Interest / Specilaization:   

Indian English Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Ideas of Nation and Nationalism, Literatures of Kashmir Conflict.

Experience:

Six and a half years. Joined as Assistant Professor on the 29th of April, 2013

Awards:

Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship (RGNF) for SC/ST Research Scholars from August, 2010

Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) from July, 2011

Administrative Responsibilities Undertaken: 

Member of M.A. and PhD Admission Committee, Library Committee of the Department, Purchase Committee of the Department, Student Counselor, Been a member of various College Inspection Teams, Member of the Election Commission for Student Elections 2019.

Academic Affiliations:

Membership of Academic Bodies

  • IACLALS—Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies.
  • FCT—Forum on Contemporary Theory.
  • CLAI—Comparative Literature Association of India.

Publications

Publications / Books:

  1. Mridha, Somjyoti. “Memories of Home and Persecution: A Study of Recent Kashmiri Pandit Narratives”. The NEHU Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 1, January-June 2015.
  2. Mridha, Somjyoti. “Stories of/from Kashmir”. Yendai, The Autumn Issue, November, 2018.
  3. Mridha, Somjyoti. “Interrogating the Idea of India: A Study of Cinematic Representation of Kashmir Conflict from Bollywood and Beyond”. DUJES (Dibrugarh University Journal of English Studies), Vol. 27, 2018-19 Issue.
  4. Mridha, Somjyoti. “A Bengali Night-in-gale: Bulbbul and the Politics of Orientalizing Bengal”. Cerebration Literary Journal, Oct, 2020 Issue.
  5. Mridha, Somjyoti. “The Poetics and the Politics of Kashmiriyat: A Study of Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator and The Book of Gold Leaves”. Religion in South Asian Anglophone Literature. Ed. Sk. Sagir Ali, Goutam Karmakar and Nasima Islam. New Delhi: Routledge, 2021.
  6. Mridha, Somjyoti. “Writing Kashmir, Writing the End of Empire: A Study of Two Post-war British Novels”. DUJES (Dibrugarh University Journal of English Studies), Vol 29, June 2021 Issue.
  7. Mridha, Somjyoti. “Post-Truth and Kashmir Conflict: A Study of Recent Literary Output about Kashmir”. The IACLALS Journal, Vol 5, 2019, June 2021.

Conferences/Seminars/Workshops

  1. Participated in a Creative Writing Workshop with the esteemed novelist Ms. Kavery Nambisan, organized by UGC Special Assistance Programme (SAP) DRS-II. Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on the 17th of March, 2011.
  2. Presented a paper entitled, “Nation and National Identity at the interface of Colonialism and Nationalism: A Study of two Early Indian English Novels” at the National Level Young Researchers Workshop: New Research in English Studies,, Organized by Department of English Literature, EFLU-Hyderabad, from 25th to 28th  August, 2011.
  3. Presented a Paper entitled, “Nation and its Margins: A Study of Shyam Selvadurai’s Ouevre” at the Fifth International ASAA Conference on “Vanishing Borders in the Age of Globalism: Austral-Asian Perspectives”, Organized by Osmania University Centre for International Programmes(OUCIP) in collaboration with Association for the Study of Australasia in Asia (ASAA), OUCIP, Hyderabad, from 12th to 14th December, 2011.
  4. Presented a Paper entitled, “Nationalism or its Travesty? A Study of Politics and Society in Recent ‘Kashmiri’ English Texts” at the National Young Researcher’s Seminar. Organized by Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, from 11th to 13th January, 2012.
  5. Presented a Paper entitled, “Literature as Resistance: Kim and its Con Texts” at the First International Conference on Changing Worlds: Reviewing and Reinventing Literature and Culture. Organized by Post Graduate Department of English, Catholicate College, Pathanamthitta, Kerala, on 23rd and 24th January, 2012.
  6. Presented a Paper entitled, “Colonial Versions and Post-colonial Revisions: A Study of Prince of Destiny and Hindupore.” at the International Conference on “Text, Culture and Performance: Postcolonial Issues” Organized by Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature And Language Studies (IACLALS) in collaboration with Central University of Jharkhand (CUJ), Ranchi, from 2nd to 4th of February, 2012.
  7. Presented a paper entitled, “The Poetics and the Politics of Violence: A Study of Kashmir Conflict in Contemporary Indian English Texts.” at the National Young Researcher’s Conference on “Discursifying ‘English’: Contemporary Cultures, Contemporary Concerns”  Organized by the Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on the 24th and 25th of January, 2013.
  8. Presented a paper entitled, “Representation of Anglicized Education in Nineteenth Century Novels: Politics, Ideologies and Hierarchies.” at the IACLALS Annual Conference, organized by the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (IACLALS) in collaboration with the University of Lucknow, Lucknow, from 7th to 9th February, 2013.
  9. Presented a Paper entitled “Ethno-nationalism in recent ‘Kashmiri’ English Writings: Politics of Identity and (Un) belonging.” at the National Seminar on the Indian World(S) of Indian English Literature, organized by  the Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on the 14th and 15th of March, 2013.
  10. Presented a Paper entitled “Memories of Persecution, Trauma and its aftermath: A Study of Kashmiri Pandit Narratives” at the International seminar on Cultures of Memory: Mnemocultural Praxis in Southeast and other Asian Countries organized by EFLU, Shillong Campus, Shillong from 7th to 9th November, 2013.
  11. Presented a Paper entitled “Of AFSPA and its aftermath: The Kashmiri Context” at the 18th Culture Studies Workshop, 2014 on Law Culture Social Justice organized by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC),  at Shantiniketan, West Bengal, from 9th to 14th March, 2014.
  12. Presented a Paper entitled, “Exile and its Aftermath: A Study of Kashmiri Pandit Narratives” at the Researches at Work Conference (Raw.con 2014) on Literature and Culture; Expanding Horizons: New Paradigms of Knowledge Production organized by the Centre for Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad from the 10th to 12th September, 2014.
  13. Presented a Paper entitled, “Interrogating the Idea of India: A Study of the Cinematic Representations of Kashmir Conflict from Bollywood and Beyond” at the National Seminar on The Idea of India in the 21st Century: Cinematic Perspectives, organized by the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS), Shimla from 26th to 28th May, 2015.
  14. Co-Coordinator of a National Seminar, Re-interpretations of the Past: The Discourse of Cultural Identity in South Asia, Organized by the Dept. of English, NEHU, Shillong, held on the 17th and 18th of March, 2016.
  15. Participated in the GIAN Course, Religion, Ideologies and Nationalism in South Asia, organized by National Institute of Technology (NIT), Silchar, Assam from 23rd to the 28th of October, 2017.
  16. Presented a Paper entitled “State Terror in the Kashmiri Context: A Study of Narratives from Kashmir” at the International Seminar on Narratives of Violence and Terror in South Asia (NOVATISA), organized by the Department of English, NEHU, Shillong, from the 16th to the 18th of November, 2017.
  17. Presented a paper entitled “Representing Kashmiri Pandits: Interrogating the idea of a Marginal/Minority community in recent Kashmiri Pandit Narratives” at the International Conference, Moving Beyond the Margin: The Politics of Exclusion and Assimilation, organized by the Department of English, Central University of Rajasthan on the 15th and 16th of November, 2018.
  18. Delivered a lecture titled, “What is Indian Literature?” at the Avvaiyar Government College for Women, Government of Puducherry on the 4th February, 2019.
  19. Presented a Paper titled, “Post-Truth and Kashmir Conflict: A Study of recent Literary Output about Kashmir” at the International Conference organized by the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (IACLALS) and the Department of English, Pondicherry University, Puducherry, from the 6th to the 8th of February, 2019. 
  20. Presented a Paper titled, “Knowledge-Power Nexus and the Colonial World: A Study of Alfred Assollant’s Once Upon a Time in India” at the National Seminar, Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures: The interfaces, with Special Reference to the North-East, Organized by the Departments of Foreign Languages, English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Shillong on the 19th and 20th of September, 2019.
  21. Delivered a lecture titled, “Literary Culture and Nationalism” at the Department of English, Vijayanagara Sri Krishnadevaraya University (VSKU), Postgraduate Centre, Koppal, Karnataka, on the 16th of January, 2020.
  22. Conducted a One Day Workshop on Academic Writing and Research at the Department of English, Vijayanagara Sri Krishnadevaraya University (VSKU), Postgraduate Centre, Koppal, Karnataka, on the 17th of January, 2020.
  23. Presented a paper titled, “Writing the End of the Empire, Writing Kashmir: A Study of three Post-War British Novels” in the UGC sponsored National Seminar on Contemporary British Fiction: Texts and Contexts, organized by the Department of English, Dibrugarh University on the 3rd and 4th of March, 2020.
  24. Delivered a lecture titled, “Nationalism and its Discontents: A Literary Perspective” at the Department of English, Manohari Devi Kanoi Girl’s College, Dibrugarh, Assam on the 5th of March, 2020.
  25. Delivered the 39th Online Lecture titled, “Writing Nation, Writing Resistance: Anglophone Kashmiri Literature Post 1990s” Organized by Calcutta Comparatists 1919 on the 6th of December, 2020.
  26. Delivered an Online Lecture “T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland” to the Post-gradute Students of Midnapore College (Autonomous), Midnapore, West Bengal, on the 18th of April, 2021.

Any other:

Courses taught recently at the MA Level :

  • ENG: C 203—Environment and Indian Writing in English
  • ENG: C 301—Poetry: Yeats to Duffy
  • ENG: C 303—Literary Theory and Criticism: Romantic Age to Structuralism
  • ENG: O 304 A—Contemporary Indian Fiction in Translation
  • At the PhD level:
  • ENG 501 Research Methodology