Rochona Majumdar
Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations
Department of Cinema and Media Studies
University of Chicago
rmajumda@uchicago.edu
Academic Appointments
Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Department of Cinema and Media Studies. University of Chicago, 2022–present.
Associate Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Department of Cinema and Media Studies. University of Chicago, 2012–2022.
Assistant Professor (tenure track), Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, 2005–2012. Affiliate member: Department of History. Resource faculty: Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
Collegiate Assistant Professor and Harper Fellow. Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and Social Science Division, University of Chicago. 2003–2005.
Education
PhD, University of Chicago. August 2003. Joint degree in History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations.
Dissertation: “Marriage, Modernity and Sources of the Self: Bengali Women, c. 1870–1956.”
Second BA (MA), St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. Modern History. 1993–1995.
BA, Presidency College, University of Calcutta. History honors. 1989–1992.
Publications
Monographs
Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony. New York: Columbia University Press, New Delhi: Penguin Random House, 2021.
Shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Association book prize, 2022.
Long-listed for the Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award, 2022.
Reviewed in:
Modernism/Modernity 30, no. 1 (2023) (web)
Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 62, no. 3 (2023) (web)
Journal of Religion and Film 27, no. 1, article 55 (2023) (web)
South Asian History and Culture 13, no. 2 (2022) (web)
Film Quarterly 75, no. 4 (2022) (web)
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry (2022) (web)
Critical Collective (December 2021) (web)
Writing Postcolonial History. London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2010.
Reviewed in:
Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 2 (2012): 469–70.
Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009. Shortlisted by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (Social Science short-list), 2011.
Reviewed in:
Women’s History Review 22, no. 5 (2013): 841–860.
Feminist Formations 24, no. 2 (2012): 211–217.
Contributions to Indian Sociology 45, no. 2 (2011).
“The Lure of the Archive: New Perspectives from South Asia,” Feminist Studies 37, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 93–110.
Asian Studies Review 35, no. 1 (March 2011): 128–129.
Social History 35, no. 4 (November 2010): 474–476.
Indian Historical Review 37, no. 2 (2010): 321–325.
American Historical Review 115, no. 4 (October 2010): 1135–36.
Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 3 (2010): 941–942.
South Asian History and Culture 1, no. 3 (2010): 450–453.
H-Asia (July 2010), www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25828
The Telegraph, Nov 6, 2009, www.telegraphindia.com/1091106/jsp/opinion/story_11703106.jsp
Anandabazar Patrika (In Bengali), Nov 14, 2009.
Garavi (In Gujarati), Nov 20, 2009.
South Asian Review 30, no. 2 (October–November 2009): 241–243.
Feminist Review (August 9, 2009), feministreview.blogspot.com/2009/08/marriage-and-modernity-family-values-in.html.
Edited Volumes
Rochona Majumdar, Sukanya Sarbadhikary, and Upal Chakrabarti, eds., Enlightenment in the Colony: A Global History of Hindoo College. Book manuscript in preparation for Cambridge University Press.
Helge Jordheim, Margrit Pernau, Rochona Majumdar, et al., eds. Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in Asia and Europe, 1870–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumdar, and Andrew Sartori, eds. From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Reviewed in:
The Historian 72, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 194–196.
The Indian Economic and Social History Review 46, no. 1 (2009): 141–144.
Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 7 (2008): 35–38.
The English Historical Review 123, no. 5 (2008): 1605–1606.