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Debayudh Chatterjee

Profile picture for Debayudh Chatterjee

Contact Information

240 [English Building]
Mailbox: 180

Office Hours

Fall 2024; Thursday: 1.00-2.00 pm. By appointment
PhD Candidate
Teaching Assistant

Biography

I identify myself as a counter-culturist who is intrigued by how individual and collective subversions and transgressions are reflected in the form and content of cultural texts. Therefore, my biography could be classified as a recollection of studying articulations of dissent, desire, disobedience, and non-conformity against the hegemonies that configure time and space. In my PhD dissertation, I am looking at communist impressions in Indian literature and cinema in the age of Hindutva and globalization. Poetry is my first love; closely followed by cinema and critical theory. I'm intrinsically bilingual and essentially interdisciplinary in my approach. 

 

 

Research Interests

Counterculture, Avant-garde literature, Marxism , Global Modernisms, Romanticism(s), Indian cinema, Postcolonialism 

Education

  • Certificate in Criticism and Theory (School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University; 2022)
  • Certificate in World Literature (The Institute for World Literature, Harvard University; 2021)
  • M.Phil. (Department of English/ University of Delhi; 2017)
  • M.A. (Department of English/Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi; 2015)
  • B.A. (Department of English/Jadavpur University; 2013)

Awards and Honors

  • Dissertation Travel Grant, 2024. Graduate College, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Dissertation Fellowship, 2023-24. School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
  • Hobart & Mary Kay Memorial Award, 2023. Graduate Poetry Contest, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Honorable Mention, Spring 2022. Graduate Poetry Contest, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
  • Nicholson Fellowship, 2022. Unit of Criticism & Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 
  • Undergraduate Teaching Award, 2021. Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; nominated for LAS Graduate Student Teaching Award 2022. 
  • Included in the list of Teachers Ranked Excellent: Fall 2023, Spring 2023 [outstanding], Fall 2022 [outstanding], Spring 2022, Fall 2021 [outstanding], Spring 2021 [outstanding], Fall 2020 [outstanding], Spring 2020, Fall 2019, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 
  • First Rank Holder in M.A. Final examination in English 2015, Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi- 110021.
  • First Rank Holder in M.A. Previous examination in English 2014, Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi- 110021
  • Late Santosh Kumar Das Memorial Poetry Award 2018.
  • Winner.  Hir-Pithara Youth Poetry Contest 2015. Indian Habitat Centre. Samanvay.

 

Courses Taught

ENGL/AAS 286 [Asian American Literature; SP2024]

ENGL 242 [Contemporary Poetry; FA2023]

ENGL 109 [Intro to Fiction; FA2021, SP2022, FA 2022]

ENGL115 [Intro to British Literature; SP2021]

Rhet 105 [Writing and Composition; FA2019, SP2020, FA2020, SP 2023]

Additional Campus Affiliations

Certified Student, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory

Graduate Assistant, Humanities Professional Resource Center (2020-23)

Member, Library Committee, English Graduate Students' Association (2021-22)

Member, Executive Committee, English Graduate Students' Association (2020-21)

Member, Textbook Advisory Committee, Undergraduate Rhetoric Program (2019-20)

Highlighted Publications

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “David Lurie and the ‘Disease of Romanticism’: The Transnational and Transcultural Afterlives of Goethe and Kleist in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & The Arts, vol. 34, Oct 2023, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.2218/forum.1.9144[ISSN: 1749-9771] 
  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “Class vs Caste: The Conundrum of Dalit Politics and the Communist Movement in India.” Organizing Equality: Dispatches from a Global Struggle, edited by Alison Hearn et al., McGill-Queen’s UP, 2022, pp. 54–71. Print. [ISBN: 978-0-2280-1195-8] 
  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “‘I Always Place My Bet on Red’: Comrade Detective and the Spectre of Communism.” FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & The Arts, vol. 32, Oct. 2021, https://doi.org/10.2218/forum.32.6470. Online. [ISSN: 1749-9771] 
  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “The Importance of Being Debi Roy, or an Episode of Caste Intolerance among the Bengali Intelligentsia and Strategies of Subjective Resistance in the Sixties.” The Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 15, 2018. 65-87. Print. [ISSN: 0973-8737] 
  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. "The 'mellow High' and the 'psychedelic War' : The Rise of Marijuana, the (Counter)-Culture of Dissidence, and the Fall of the American Army in the Vietnam War." ESharp 25.1 (2017): 32-44. University of Glasgow. Arts Sharp. Online. [ISSN: 1742-4542] 

 

Recent Publications

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. "The Adaptation of an Adaptation: A Review of Suman Mukhopadhyay's The Post Office: Tagore for the 21st Century Stage." Kritik, Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory, 13 Nov 23, criticism.illinois.edu/blog/2023-11-13t155631/adaptation-adaptation-review-suman-mukhopadhyays-post-office-tagore-21st

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “Love in the Time of Greed and Gods: A Review of Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Nazarband.” Kritik, Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory, 22 Sept. 2022, criticism.illinois.edu/blog/love-time-greed-and-gods-review-suman-mukhopadhyays-nazarband. 

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “Reading Heinrich Von Kleist With Thomas Mann and the Other Way round--One of the Many Afterlives of Romanticism.” The Vault of Culture, 7 Sept. 2022, www.vaultofculture.com/vault/onthepage/kleistmann. 

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh “Reflections on the School of Criticism and Theory, Summer 2022.” Kritik, Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory 20, Aug. 2022, criticism.illinois.edu/debayudh-chatterjee-english-unit-criticism-sct-fellow-summer-2022. 

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh, et al. “Six Feet Apart: City Space and Mass Media.” The Bhawanipur Education Society , Socializing Distance: Pandemic and Evolving Human Relations , 18 Aug. 2020, youtu.be/_vd4vMIw2W0. 

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “The French Revolution, Nineteenth Century British Literature, and the Anti-colonial Intellectual: Understanding CLR James’s Toussaint L’Ouverture.” Kritik, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, 21 Oct. 2019, https://unitforcriticism.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/professor-nasser-muft…;

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. "Stories of Survival: Constructing Dalit Consciousness in Fourth World Fiction." Multicoloured Glass: Studies on Indian Short Stories. Ed. Saikat Guha. New Delhi: Authors, 2017. 137-146 Print. [ISBN: 978-93-5207-5821-9] 

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “Confessions of a Namasudra Communist.” Indian Cultural Forum, 17 June 2017, https://www.indianculturalforum.in/2017/06/17/confessions-of-a-namasudra-communist/.

  • Chatterjee, Debayudh. “Walter Benjamin, Dalit Literature, and the Politics of Translation.” Caesurae: Poetics of Cultural Translation , vol. 2, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 23–31., https://www.caesurae.org/interventions. [ISSN:2454-9495]