
Aishika Chakraborty is Professor and Director of the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, India. Her research thrives at the intersection of gender history, dance history and feminist performance of Bengal. Her book, Widows of Colonial Bengal: Gender, Morality and Cultural Representation (2023) received the Hiralal Gupta Research Award for the Best Book by a Woman Historian in the Indian History Congress, 2023.
Prof. Chakraborty is currently working with the erotic cabaret dancers of Calcutta. She has edited a special issue of the South Asian History and Culture titled The Dancing Body: Labour, Livelihood and Leisure (with Urmimala Sarkar Munsi) and a special issue of Economic and political Weekly titled, Performing Art /Performing Labour (with Anagha Tambe).
As a bilingual author, Prof. Chakraborty has authored two books in Bengali. While her research on Miss Shefali, the cabaret queen of postcolonial Calcutta came out as Kolkatar Cabaret: Bangali, Younata Ebang Miss Shefali (2020), she has captured the changing faces of contemporary dance of Calcutta in Kolkatar Nach: Samakaleen Nagarnritya (2019). Her earlier edited volumes are The Moving Space: Women in Dance (with Urmimala Sarkar Munsi) and Ranjabati, A Dancer and Her World (2008).
Her forthcoming edited volume is Gendered Bodies, Social Exclusions: Contemporary Issues in Women’s Studies (with Nandita Banerjee Dhawan, Routledge 2025).
The lecture will take place in Sullivant Hall 225 on October 28 from 11am-12:30pm.
The Navanritya workshop (a contemporary dance technique of India) will take place in Sullivant Hall 390 on October 29 from 9:30-11am.
The South Asian Studies Initiative and NESA are co-hosts for these events. They are free and open to the students, staff and faculty of OSU.