Research & Publications — Dr. Anindita Bhattacharya

× Forthcoming Book

Monograph

2026 Forthcoming Monograph · Bloomsbury Academic

The Postcolonial Fantastic: Constructing Irish and Bengali Literary Childhoods

My first monograph develops my doctoral research into a sustained book-length argument about Irish and Bengali children’s literatures. Moving between authors such as Padraic Colum, Ella Young, Upendrakishore Ray Choudhury, and Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, I examine how juvenile literary cultures harness folklore and the fantastic to negotiate postcolonial questions of identity, nationhood, and childhood.

Expression of interest confirmed by Bloomsbury Academic. I expect to complete it in 2026.

× Edited Volumes

Book Chapters

The Writings of Padraic Colum book cover

2023 Book Chapter · Routledge

“Materialism, Commodification and Alienation in Padraic Colum’s Short Stories: A Socialist Overview”

In The Writings of Padraic Colum: ‘That Queer Thing Genius.’ Routledge, 2023, pp. 107–117. Ed. Padraic Whyte & Keith O’Sullivan. ISBN: 9781032393223

A Marxist reading of Colum’s short fiction, examining socialist politics, the commodification of labour, and alienation within an Irish agrarian and urban context — situating Colum within early twentieth-century Irish social thought.

The Edinburgh History of Children's Periodicals book cover

2022 Book Chapter · Edinburgh University Press

“For the Youth, By the Youth: Child-Centrism and the Rise of the Fantastic in Juvenile Print Cultures in Nineteenth-Century Ireland”

In The Edinburgh History of Children’s Periodicals. Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp. 45–63. Ed. Beth Rogers & Christine Moruzi. ISBN: 9781399506656

An archival study of nineteenth-century Irish juvenile print culture, tracing how child-centred periodicals cultivated a distinct tradition of the fantastic as a vehicle for national and cultural identity.

Multicoloured Glass: Studies on Indian Short Stories book cover

2017 Book Chapter

“Not Just for Laughs: Decoding the Humor in Ismat Chugtai’s All for a Husband and Lihaf”

In Multicoloured Glass: Studies on Indian Short Stories. AuthorPress, 2017, pp. 63–72. Ed. Saikat Guha. ISBN: 9789352075829

A feminist and psychoanalytic reading of Chugtai’s darkly comic fiction, arguing that humor functions as a subversive strategy for negotiating gender, sexuality, and social constraint in mid-twentieth-century South Asia.

○ Peer-Reviewed

Journal Articles

2024 Peer-Reviewed

“Decolonising the Narrative in Folkloric Adaptations of The King of Ireland’s Son and ‘Goopi Gyne Bagha Byne.’”

SEXTANT: masculinities, sextualities & decolonialities, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2024, pp. 46–59

A comparative reading of Irish and Bengali folkloric adaptations, examining how decolonial narrative strategies operate across two distinct juvenile literary traditions, negotiating masculinity, cultural identity, and postcolonial selfhood.

2016 Peer-Reviewed

“Borrowing and the Art of ‘Batcheat’: Intertextuality and Dialogism in a Postcolonial Study of Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories”

Modern Research Studies Journal, Vol. III, Issue III, September 2016, pp. 782–805. ISSN: 2349-2147

A study of intertextuality and Bakhtinian dialogism in Rushdie’s children’s novel, arguing that the text’s borrowings from global narrative traditions constitute a deliberate postcolonial strategy of reclamation.

International Journal of English Language, Literature, and Humanities cover

2016 Peer-Reviewed

“Problematizing the Notion of Life: Edward Bond’s Lear as a Study in Biopolitics and Nihilism”

International Journal of English Language, Literature, and Humanities, Vol. IV, Issue III, March 2016. ISSN: 2321-7065

A post-structuralist analysis of Bond’s radical rewriting of King Lear, applying Foucauldian biopolitics and existentialist frameworks to the play’s treatment of the body, power, and state violence.

Research &Publications