Dharitri Bhattacharjee, PhD

Associate Professor

About

PhD, 2015: University of Texas at Austin. 

Dharitri Bhattacharjee joined Western Washington University in 2019. She is now an Associate Professor of South Asian and Indian Ocean world history. Learn more about Dr. Bhattacharjee on her Academia Page.

Primarily trained in gender and comparative history and South Asian history, Dharitri loves diversifying her research. She is currently working on 4 Research projects:

  1. Her first book on Muslim politics in Bengal, 1937-1947. (She has published on this topic the most.)
  2. After stumbling upon an archive on Centre of Oriental Culture (1942-1947) in the British Museum, she became interested in museums and centers as technologies of knowledge production.
  3. Through Maurice Vidal Portman, a late 19th British colonial office in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, she is developing a project involving indigeneity and oceanic separateness.
  4. Thinking about local and global connection yielded her first documentary, Limits of History. The idea of a united world, specifically an Indian Ocean world is what inspires Dharitri's second book project.

Research Interests

  • South Asian History, Indian Ocean World, Empire, Colonialism, Decolonization

Current Courses

Dharitri Bhattacharjee teaches courses on the Indian Ocean world, Modern South Asia, Gender and Sexuality, and India’s Partition and Decolonial Theory. More than teaching about new histories from new parts of the world, Dharitri’s teaching focuses on historical methodology and historiography.

Courses:

  • Introduction to South Asian History
  • Decolonial Theory
  • Gender and Sexuality in Modern India
  • Adventures at Sea: Indian Ocean in World History
  • 1947, Partition of India
  • Cultural Snapshots from India
  • Modern India

Selected Publications

Publications:

  • “The White Man as a Burden on History: A Centre of Oriental Culture, 1942-1947.” Technologies of Knowledge: Rethinking the Archive in Modern South Asia. Edited by Aryendra Chakravartty and Samiparna Samanta. Routledge. 2024.
  • “History, Historiography, Ethnography and Diaspora in Amitav Ghosh's In Antique Land.” Teaching Anglophone South Asian Diasporic Literature. Modern Languages Association. Edited by Nalini Iyer and Pallavi Rastogi. Pages 71-78. 2024.
  • "Towards a Contingent High Muslim Political History of Bengal, 1937–1947." History Compass. 19:10, 1-15. 2021.
  • "Provincial Autonomy, Decolonization, War and Nationalism: Fazlul Huq’s chief Ministerial Tenure, 1937–1943." South Asian History and Culture. 9:2, 159-180. 2018.

 

Public History Projects:

  • 2024: Documentary. Limits of History. Director and Producer.
  • 2022: Grit and Grub Project Interviews. 9 Episode Limited Podcast. KMRE Radio Program (November-December).
  • 2022: Cinema East Series at Pickford; Film Introduction for Ritwick Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara (Cloud-Capped Star, 1960).
  • 2021: Cinema East Series at Pickford; Film Introduction for Payal Kapadia’s debut documentary, A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021).
  • 2020: Curator for "Stories to Tell Oral History Project." Western Washington University Archives (Co-Hosted by South Asian American Digital Archives).
  • 2020: Taught a 4-Part Western CARES Lecture Series called "Adventures at Sea: Indian Ocean History" for 5- to 12-year-olds.

 

Select Public Scholarship:

  • Book Review for BC Studies (Vancouver): Unmooring the Komagata Maru: Charting Colonial Trajectories. Edited by Rita Kaur Dhamoon et al. 2021.
  • “Never Forget: A new memorial to Lynching Victims Forces America to Confront its Painful Past.” The Caravan: A Journal of Politics and Culture. November 2018.
  • “Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy’s United Bengal Plan That Could Have Changed the Course of India’s History.” The Wire. August 15, 2017.
  • “It's Time Bengal Remembered a Certain Huq.” The Wire. June 12, 2016.
  • “A Lesson in Tolerance for Smriti Irani from 19th Century India.” The Wire. March 5, 2016.