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Reshmi Mukherjee

Headshot of Reshmi MukherjeeManaging Director of the Equity Advocates Program

Dr. Reshmi Mukherjee is an Associate Professor of Global Humanities and Cultural Studies (pending SBOE approval) and Graduate Director for MA in English. From 2013-2021, Dr. Mukherjee has served as a faculty member in the former English Department. In 2014-2015, she served as the interim Director of the Gender Studies Program at Boise State and in 2020-2021, she served as the START Faculty Associate for GEM 3 project. Dr. Mukherjee is a trained dialogue facilitator and an equity advocate. She has also served as faculty advisor for more than one student organization and works closely with student bodies and individual students to support them in their personal and academic journey.

Before coming to the United States as a graduate student to earn her doctorate degree, Dr. Mukherjee completed her MPhil in Women’s Studies from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India and has worked with multiple nonprofit organizations in rural and urban India on issues of economic sustenance in low-income groups, social equity, human rights and social justice, gender violence in domestic spaces, anti-human trafficking for child prostitution, and has helped in community development and awareness raising programs. Mukherjee’s research and teaching focus on many of the same issues and she regularly teaches classes on race, gender, sexuality, culture, and human rights issues in 20th and 21st century. She also specializes in testimonio, exilic, diasporic, and refugee narratives, and storytelling as reclaiming history. At present she is working on her book monograph titled “Teaching Empathy Without Pity: Critical Refugee Studies and Learning to learn by unlearning”.

Education

  • Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Certificate in Women and Gender Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • M. Phil. Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University
  • M.A.  Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University
  • B.A.   Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University

Recent Publications

Articles

  • “Spaces of Resistance in Assia Djebar’s A Sister to Scheherazade (Ombre sultane) and Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement).” Research in African Literatures Journal, (forthcoming 2021).
  • “Threads: From the Refugee Crisis: Creative Nonfiction and Critical Pedagogy.” Assay: A Journal Of Nonfiction Studies, vol. 5, no. 2 (March 2019) https://www.assayjournal.com/reshmi-mukherjee-threads-from-the-refugee-crisis-creative-nonfiction-and-critical-pedagogy-52.html
  • “A True Renaissance Man.” Anant Sukla as I know him. Festschrift. Edited by Urmishree Bedamatta, Brahmi Academic Publishing, 2018, pp 58-63.
  • “The New Bhadramahila and the Reformed Bhadralok: Reconfiguration of Gender Relations in Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘The Wife’s Letter’ (‘Streer Patra’) and The Home and the World(Ghare Baire).” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 1, pp. 65-84. (2017)
  • “Living in Subalternity: The Becoming of the Subaltern in Bessie Head’s A Woman Alone, A Gesture of Belonging, and When Rain Clouds Gather.” Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 7, no. 2, 2014, pp. 36-55. Republished in April 2016.
  • “The Crisis in Teaching Subalternity.” Conference Proceedings of the First International Conference on ​Literature, Language and Communication: An Essential Trident. Lucknow, India (January 2015).

Chapter in Edited Collection

“Imagination and Gender: Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women Without Men.” Imagination and Art, edited by Keith Moser and Ananta Shukla, Brill Academic (July, 2020).

Forthcoming

The “other” Suffragette in the anthology Idaho Women 100 Legacy. Idaho Historical Society.  

Book Reviews

  • The Postcolonial World, edited by Jyotsna Singh and David Kim. South Asian Review, vol. 40, nos. 1-2, 2019, pp. 129-131, https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2019.1575044.
  • Abecedarium Anthology: The Cambridge Introduction to Edward W. Said, by Connor McCarthy. b2o, 25 February 2015, https://www.boundary2.org/2015/02/abecedarium-anthology-the-cambridge-introduction-to-edward-w-said/

Documentary Production

“Quilting to Speak.” Documentary. YouTube, uploaded by Chandra Reyna, April 7 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTuGPF08z0&feature=youtu.be 

Other publications

Chakraborty, Indrani, Tapati Bhowmik, Reshmi Mukherjee “A Situational Analysis of Child Sex Tourism in India.” ECPAT International, 2003, pp. 1-52

Courses

ENGL 550: Body Politics

ENGL 530: Literature and Politics

ENGL 530: Studies in a Literary Period: Empathy without Pity

ENGL 530: Studies in a Literary Period: Space, Subalternity, & Agency in Postcolonial Studies

ENGL 424: Advanced Topics in Literature: Prison Narratives

ENGL 398: Gender, Biopower, and War (Honors)

ENGL 396: Postcolonial Literature

ENGL 395: Women Writers

ENGL 393: Literary Criticism and Theory

ENGL 268: Survey of British Literature 1790-Present

ENGL 216: Literatures of Global Consciousness

GS 301: Feminist Theory

GS 200: Introduction to Gender Studies

Reshmi can assist you with:

  • Information about the Equity Advocate Program
  • Information about including an Equity Advocate on a search committee
  • Research and resources available about equitable hiring practices and retention efforts
  • Consultation and advice about Faculty and Staff equitable hiring processes

To request a consultation with Reshmi, please complete the BUILD Consultation Request Form.