Aparna DharwadkerAssociate Professor, English and Theatre & Drama Degrees and InstitutionsM. A., University of Delhi (1977) Research InterestsModern Indian and postcolonial literature, theatre, and culture; postcolonial theory; modernity and modernism; non-western anglophone writing; cultural forms of the South Asian diaspora; Restoration and eighteenth-century British theatre Selected PublicationsTheatres of Independence: Drama, Theory and Urban Performance in India Since 1947 (Oxford University Press and University of Iowa Press, 2005), the first comprehensive study of a major postcolonial national theatre. In 2006, this book won the prestigious Joe A. Callaway Prize for the Best Book in Drama and Theatre published in 2004-2005. Combining theatre history with theoretical analysis and literary interpretation, the book examines the unprecedented conditions for writing and performance that the experience of new nationhood created in a dozen major Indian languages, and discusses the forms of theory and practice that have made the contemporary Indian stage a vital part of postcolonial and world theatre; Introductions to The Collected Plays of Girish Karnad, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 2005); essays on Indian, postcolonial, and Restoration theatre in Theatre Research International (2003 and 2002), The Blackwell Companion to Restoration Drama (2001), Theatre Journal (1998), Studies in Philology (1998), The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (1998), Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 (1997), New Theatre Quarterly (1995), PMLA (1995), and Modern Drama (1995). Personal StatementAs a scholar and teacher, my career has been shaped significantly by the disciplinary and curricular changes that began to transform literary studies two decades ago. After an arch-canonical education in Anglo-American literature and literary history at the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels in India, I did doctoral work in the US in late-seventeenth century British theatre, and then became interested in the relation of postcolonial theory to the complex multilingual societies of India, Africa, and the Caribbean. I now hold a joint appointment in two UW departments (Theatre & Drama and English) that accommodate my interests in both established and developing fields of study, especially Modern Indian theatre, postcolonial theatre, and the cultural forms of the global South Asian diaspora. My published work in these areas emphasizes the need for imaginative methodological apparatuses in dealing with new forms of knowledge; in the classroom, my objectives are to open up new areas of inquiry, promote cultural literacy, and foster a sense of global citizenship. Current ProjectsA Poetics of Modernity: Theories of Drama, Theatre, and Performance in Modern India, 1860-2005, edited collection of seminal works of theatre theory and criticism by Indian practitioners, 1860-the present; Mohan Rakesh, Three Plays, translation from Hindi into English of the three full-length plays of a major post-independence Indian playwright. Teaching216: Modern British literature |