Rohit Chakraborty

Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com Rohit Chakraborty Wed, 30 Nov 2022 19:00:49 +0000 https://rohitchakraborty.com en Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Rohit-Chakraborty Sun, 02 Jun 2019 19:12:14 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Rohit-Chakraborty <img width="2304" height="3456" width_o="2304" height_o="3456" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b23af6aa658ed6e5eaf9b79738923141aef2595cf07ebcf9b8f94ff0a4e185f1/IMG_0124.jpeg" data-mid="245639368" border="0" data-scale="85" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b23af6aa658ed6e5eaf9b79738923141aef2595cf07ebcf9b8f94ff0a4e185f1/IMG_0124.jpeg" />CalcuttaMarch 2026 ROHIT CHAKRABORTY is a writer, scholar, and critic from Guwahati. They earned their BA in English from Jadavpur University, their MSt from St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, where they read World Literatures in English as a Felix Scholar, and their PhD in English from Emory University, where they were a Laney Graduate School Fellow and a SIRE Fellow in the Humanities and Social Sciences. They live in Calcutta. I. Teaching II. Writing III. AwardsIV. Contact Teaching https://rohitchakraborty.com/Teaching Sat, 18 Dec 2021 00:16:12 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Teaching ← Teaching → ENG 213W, Section 1“Odbhuth” India: Queer Vernaculars of Indian Literature (Syllabus)Spring 2024 “Queer” comes out of the Global North and has a widely taxonomic and political purchase today, prominently as a shorthand for the LGBTQIA+. Before its appropriation as a slur, and its reclamation by those who sustained its injury, “queer,” like the Bangla word, “odbhuth,” implied the strange and peculiar, sometimes the unknown or misfit. But how portable is “queer” to the Global South? Using India and its “odbhuth” literature as a case study, this course invites students to respond to this query. Readings include: short fiction, in English and in translation, by Pandey Bechan Sharma “Ugra,” Aruni Kashyap, Vasundhendra, Ismat Chughtai, Krishn Chander; cinema (Lihaaf: The Quilt, Sixth Happiness, Fire); young people’s literature by Ashutosh Pathak and Kanak Shashi; a novel by Firdaus Kanga; poetry by Suniti Namjoshi, Agha Shahid Ali, Minal Hajratwala, Hoshang Merchant; scholarship of Gayatri Gopinath, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Hilary Chute, et al; a graphic novel by Amruta Patil; a translated “Nirala” novella by Satti Khanna; and the archives of Trikone recently acquired by the Rose Library at Emory University. Readings and discussions in this course will animate the tensions that arise when taxonomies of the Global North, like “queer,” become a part of non-heteronormative spaces in the Global South. Can a complete decolonisation from such “imported” taxonomies be possible? Or are there some benefits to the syncretism that arises when two worlds, and the two ways of accenting queerness, collide? ENGRD 101, Section 23 Desiring Elsewhere (Syllabus) Spring 2023 This first-year writing course introduces students to key texts and theories that collectively aspire to do queer studies from “elsewhere” by redistributing the monopoly of queer hermeneutics, which originated in the 1990s in the U.S. academy, to vernaculars and cartographies of desire beyond their inaugural scene. Students will read academic writing across a moderately expansive disciplinary breadth — from literary studies to anthropology — and hone their skills at understanding the architecture and rhetorical contingencies of various academic genres of writing. The (provisional) texts for this seminar come from Anjali Arondekar and Geeta Patel, Margot Weiss, Gayatri Gopinath, Jasbir K. Puar, Kadji Amin, K’eguro Macharia, Rovel Sequeira, Benjamin Kahan, et al.  Each seminar will comprise discussions guided by students’ responses to the texts. Assignments for this seminar will include weekly discussion posts, a literature review, a conference paper, a journal article, and a portfolio. ENGRD 101, Section 8 Queer Intimacies Around the World (Syllabus) Spring 2022 This first-year writing course cultivates responses to queer intimacies which have been written about, painted, performed on film, and photographed around the world. Students will read “texts” in myriad modes to refine techniques of observation, analysis and composition, to learn the architectures of varied genres of critical writing, and to develop adaptability to various rhetorical contingencies. Assignments will include a curatorial essay, a comparative film review, an abstract for a journal article, and a literary analysis. Materials that students will engage with include a compilation of queer paintings by Sola Olulode, Uttam Chitrakar, Louis Fratino, Cao Xue, Salman Toor, et al; scholarship by Rita Felski, Gayatri Gopinath, J. Jack Halberstam, Madhavi Menon, Alka Pande, Somdatta Mandal, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Anuradha Ghosh, Lawrence W. Preston, Vinay Lal; academic reviews by Darryl B. Hill and Rachel Adams; documentaries directed by Naveen Kishore (Performing the Goddess, 1999), and Alexandra Shiva, Sean MacDonald, and Michelle Gucovsky (Bombay Eunuch, 2001); public writing by Durga Chew Bose, Ambika Trasi, Hilton Als, and Namwali Serpell; and Chinelo Okparanta’s novel, Under the Udala Trees (2015). ENGRD 101, Section 3 Queer Intimacies Around the World (Syllabus) Fall 2021 This first-year writing course cultivates responses to queer intimacies which have been written about, painted, performed on film, and photographed around the world. Students will read “texts” in myriad modes to refine techniques of observation, analysis, and composition. Assignments with various rhetorical contingencies include a literacy narrative, a literary analysis, a video essay, and a profile or a report based upon archival materials from the LGBTQ collection at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives & Rare Books Library, Emory University. Materials that students will engage with include a compilation of queer paintings by Sola Olulode, Uttam Chitrakar, Louis Fratino, Cao Xue, Salman Toor, et al.; a selection of Sunil Gupta’s photographs collected in Queer (2011) and Wish You Were Here (2009); Andrea Lawlor’s 2017 novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl; short films directed by Akosua Adoma Owusu (Relcutantly Queer, 2016) and Tammy Rae Carland (Dear Mom, 1995); and public writing by Durga Chew-Bose and E. Alex Jung. Writing https://rohitchakraborty.com/Writing Tue, 13 Jul 2021 02:41:22 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Writing ←  Public Academic → Public Writing https://rohitchakraborty.com/Public-Writing-1 Wed, 02 Nov 2022 19:12:13 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Public-Writing-1 ← Public Writing → I. Essays  II. Reviews    IV. Reportage III. Fiction Essays https://rohitchakraborty.com/Essays Tue, 29 Nov 2022 20:56:36 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Essays ← Essays → vii. “Who was Vishwanath Singh Bahadur? This is how a queer Maharajah and his court seduced an Englishman,” Scroll, 25 November 2023 vi.“Blending Out,”* The Caravan,01 April 2020 *Shortlisted, RedInk Awards,Arts (Print), Mumbai Press Club 2021 v.“Resident Outsiders,” The Caravan,01 December 2019 iv. “The story of  ‘Chocolate,’ the Hindi story published in 1924 that created a furore over homosexuality,” Scroll,23 March 2019 iii. “A map to truly claim queer pride,” The Telegraph, 01 August 2018 ii.“The currency of shame,” The Telegraph,23 May 2018 i.“Three Lions and Tipu’s Tiger,” The Hindu, 06 May 2018 Reviews https://rohitchakraborty.com/Reviews Wed, 30 Nov 2022 06:18:51 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Reviews ← Reviews → xv.“How French imperialism in Indiawas linked to the slave trade,” Mint Lounge,15 March 2026 xiv.“How the British tried to tame India’s diverse and amorphous queer past,” Mint Lounge,  25 October 2025 xiii. “Heart of whiteness,” The Telegraph,05 September 2025 xii.“The Early Revolutionary,” Open,06 June 2025 xi. “The Fall of Red Fort,” Open,09 September 2022 x.“Politics of Meat,”Open,03 February 2020 ix. “Subversive Truth,” Open, 26 July 2019 viii.“Uneasy Home,” Open,  24 April 2019 vii. “The quotidian resumed,” Biblio: A Review of Books 07 January 2019 vi. “The adulteration of optimism,” Biblio: A Review of Books, 01 June 2019 v. “Lust for Life,” Open, 27 February 2019 iv.“Sally Rooney is one of us,” The Hindu, 14 September 2018 iii. “The lives of others,” The Hindu, 05 August 2018 ii. “On Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir,” The Millions, 08 February 2017 i. “Confronting her Freudian Fate?” Kindle, 16 February 2016 Fiction https://rohitchakraborty.com/Fiction Tue, 29 Nov 2022 19:33:22 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Fiction ← Fiction → viii.“Miyah Ayah,”Wasafiri 40 (1), March 2025 vii. “What is the Weight of the Moon?” The Mays XXVI, June 2018  vi.“Triptych,” The Isis (Trinity Term), May 2018 v. “China and Clay,” The Isis (online), 29 May 2018 iv. “Mare, Mary,” Berfrois (archived),29 September 2017 iii. “Biscuits,” Pif,September 2016 ii. “Mongoose,” Squawk Back 159, 06 July 2016 i. “Ella’s Song,” Kindle,  02 February 2016 Reportage https://rohitchakraborty.com/Reportage Wed, 30 Nov 2022 17:06:50 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Reportage ← Reportage → vii.“An art exhibition explores the impactof monsoons on the mind, body and soul,”Mint Lounge,28 August 2025 vi.“‘I write novels of ideas, but the ideas have to be lived by characters’: Author Sanjena Sathian,” Scroll, 27 July 2025 v. “This 3,200-square-foot Surat penthouse bringsa lightness to the monolithic,” Architectural Digest India,21 July 2025 iv.“Sohrab Hura’s art is so universallyrelatable that he won a very prestigiousprize for it,” Vogue India,24 May 2025 iii.“Van of Good Times,” The Hindu,16 March 2019 ii.“Kolkata’s latest exhibit is all about unity in diversity,” Vogue India,30 January 2019 i.“Meet Paul Mallick, the last saxophonist of  70s Park Street,” The Hindu,04 November 2018 Academic Writing https://rohitchakraborty.com/Academic-Writing Thu, 24 Nov 2022 15:51:39 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Academic-Writing ← Academic Writing Essays Reviews → Academic Essays https://rohitchakraborty.com/Academic-Essays Wed, 30 Nov 2022 19:00:49 +0000 Rohit Chakraborty https://rohitchakraborty.com/Academic-Essays ← Essays → i. “Homogastroerotics,”* GLQ: The Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 31 (3): 327-53,01 June 2025 *Winner, Pride Award for Excellence in LGBTQ Writing, Office of LGBT Life, Emory University, 2025