Dr. Anita Raychawdhuri
Dr. Anita Raychawdhuri
Assistant Professor of EnglishEnglishBiography
Dr. Raychawdhuri (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in the English Department. She holds a B.A. from Binghamton University State University of New York and a M.A./Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in early modern drama (including Shakespeare), premodern critical race studies, and queer studies. She has secondary interests in Shakespearean adaptation, early modern poetry, and the Mughal Empire. Dr. Raychawdhuri has researched queer experience in Ben Jonson's court masques, Stephen Varble's Gutter Art and Elizabethan appropriations, Indian cinema and adaptation in Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider, and the Show Must Go Online's performance of John Lyly's Gallathea. She is a co-editor of Margaret Cavendish's Poems and Fancies and was previously a co-convenor of a research group on Shakespeare and global cinema. Any students with overlapping interests are encouraged to get in touch!
Degrees Earned
2022 Ph.D., University of California Santa Barbara
English Literature, Certificate in College and University Teaching
Dissertation: "Talking Dirty: Queer Performance, Racialized Spectacle, and Empire in Early Modern English Drama"
Committee: Bernadette Andrea (chair), Abdulhamit Arvas, Julie Carlson, James Kearney
2019 M.A, University of California Santa Barbara
Reading Lists: Renaissance literature, Medieval literature, Theories of Gender and Sexuality
2016 B.A, Binghamton University, State University of New York English Literature with Classical Civilization minor (Honors in English Literature) Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa
Courses Taught
ENG 3133 Studies in Dramatic Literature
ENG 1301 Composition I
ENG 3347 Studies in Early Modern British Literature and Culture
Experience Qualifications
Dr. Raychawdhuri (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in the English Department. She holds a B.A. from Binghamton University State University of New York and a M.A./Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in early modern drama (including Shakespeare), premodern critical race studies, and queer studies. She has secondary interests in Shakespearean adaptation, early modern poetry, and the Mughal Empire. She has published on the above topics in a number of venues and been invited to present her work at several international and national conferences. In addition, she has received grants and awards to support her book project (derived from her dissertation) including The Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation European Studies Fellowship, The University of California Humanities Research Institute Graduate Student Dissertation Support, and the Richard Helgerson Graduate Student Achievement Award. In addition, she has received funding from the Shakespeare Association of America, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Modern Language Association. She has taught a wide range of courses in literary studies at UHD and UC Santa Barbara, with a particular focus on early modern literature, queer studies, and critical race studies. She was also the project manager for several years for the English Broadside Ballad Archive, a NEH funded digital humanities project, focused on digitizing and cataloging broadsides. She has participated in a number of Folger Shakespeare Library colloquia and symposia and is also a member of the RaceB4Race mentoring program. She previously worked as an editor for Feminist Film and Media Studies journal Camera Obscura from Duke University Press.