Rimli Bhattacharya

Biography

A comparatist by training, I work in different languages, literatures and media. My research interest in narratology is located in diverse genres: the nineteenth-century short story in Russian, French and English in my doctoral dissertation; autobiography (the Bengali stage actress Binodini Dasi); and in the last decade, on the fictional and autobiographical writings of Dhan Gopal Mukerji—the subject of an ongoing study. From the 1980s my research has focused primarily on performance theory and history, drawing on the print and visual culture of 19th and early 20th century Bengal and England. I am currently completing a monograph tentatively entitled ‘“The Dancing Poet”: Rabindranath Tagore and Modernity in Performance’. Translation has been a central activity in both these areas. Prose translations, primarily from Bangla to English, include short stories, novels (Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Aranyak, Of the Forest), autobiographies and critical essays. A major area of intellectual engagement has been to link my involvement with primary education in India with research on children’s literature. I seek to combine classroom observation, the creation and critique of teaching-learning materials and theories of pedagogy in relation to multilinguality and the diverse visual and performative traditions of the Indian subcontinent. A particularly rich comparatist perspective in the area of language-literature learning of ‘subject English’ at the school level emerged during a two-year collaborative project with colleagues from India, South Africa and the UK. An area of sustained exploration MPhil course ‘Children’s Literature: Childhood, pedagogy and literary forms’ (2003-2009). I have involved advanced students in short-term independent projects which I have conceptualised and supervised on language and image in school textbooks; lullabies and playsongs in several Indian languages; and aspects of visual culture.

Research Interest

Comparative Literature & Narrative Theory; Performance history and theory (19th and 20th centuries); Film and the visual arts; Primary education and children’s literature; Translation