Speakers' Forum


Keynote Speaker

Professor Swapan Chakravorty

Professor Swapan Chakravorty (1954- ) is Professor of English, Jadavpur University. Until recently, he was Director General, National Library, Kolkata, and Secretary and Curator, Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata. Educated at Presidency College, Jadavpur University and Oxford University, he writes in English and Bengali, and has held visiting assignments at the Universiti Malaya, the University of Alabama and the University of London.

His books include Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (with Suzana Milevska and Tani E. Barlow) (London: Seagull, 2007), Bangalir ingreji sahityacharcha (Kolkata: Anustup, 2006), and Shakespeare (Kolkata: Papyrus, 1999). His edited book Mudraner sanskriti o bangla boi (Kolkata: Ababhas, 2007) won the Narasingh Das Award of Delhi University in 2009. He was one of the contributory editors of Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (gen. ed.), The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008), and Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (gen. ed.), Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008). The former was awarded the Distinguished Scholarly Edition Prize by the Modern Language Association of America in 2009 and Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Prize by Rice University in 2011.

He has edited three volumes on book history with Abhijit Gupta, Print Areas: Book History in India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), Moveable Type: Book History in India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008), and New Word Order: Transnational Themes in Book History (Delhi: Worldview, 2011) besides contributing to The Oxford Companion to the Book, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). His most recent publications are (edited) Rabindranath: silparup, patthrup, grantharup (Kolkata: Ababhas, 2011), Praphullachandra Ray: A Checklist of Major Holdings in English and Bengali (with Edited Texts in Sanskrit) (Kolkata: National Library, 2011), and Nameless Recognition: Rabindranath Tagore and Other Indian Literatures (Kolkata: National Library, 2011).

Invited Speakers

Abhijit Gupta

Abhijit Gupta is Associate Professor of English at Jadavpur University, and Director, Jadavpur University Press. He graduated in English from Jadavpur University and received a PhD from Cambridge University for his work on 19th century British publishing. He is co-editor, along with Swapan Chakravorty of the Book History in India series, of which three volumes have been published: Print Areas (2004), Moveable Types (2008) and New Word Order (2011).

He was associate editor for South Asia for the Oxford Companion to the Book (2010). He has completed an electronic database and location register of all books printed in Bengali from 1801-1867 and is currently at work on the period 1868-1914. His most recent published works are two translations of Bengali stories for children, titled Funny and Funnier and Mad and Madder,published by Scholastic. His other research areas include science fiction, graphic novels, crime fiction and the 19th century.

Dr. Radhika Seshan

Dr. Radhika Seshan is Associate Professor at the Department of History, University of Pune. Her area of specialization is Medieval Indian History, within which she focuses primarily on trade and urbanization in the 17th century.

. Her recent publications include "Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast, Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries" (Primus Books, Delhi, 2012), and "Ideas and Institutions in Medieval India, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries (Orient BlackSwan, 2013). She is also joint editor of a newly launched series, "Issues in History", published by Primus Books, Delhi.

Back to Top