Assistant Professor/Student Advisor Judhajit Sarkar
Judhajit Sarkar joined the Department of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures as an Assistant Professor and Student Advisor in 2023. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India) and was awarded a doctoral fellowship under the Graduate Programme for Transcultural Studies, within the framework of the “Cluster of Excellence: Asia & Europe in a Global Context.” Sarkar’s research interests include literary and cultural historiography of modern South Asia (with a particular focus on the Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali language zones); twentieth-century intellectual history; postcolonial literature and theory; cultural Cold War and various articulations of modernist internationalism; as well as Marxism and critical theory. His doctoral dissertation focused on the progressive-modernist conjuncture in South Asian poetry and literary consciousness.
Doctoral Research
Project Title: Eros, Epiphany, Fantasy: South Asian Poetry and Literary Consciousness at the Progressive–Modernist Conjuncture
Summary: Sarkar's doctoral research examined the works of three major poets of twentieth-century South Asia—namely Sanaullah Dar ‘Miraji,’ Jibanananda Das, and Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh—who wrote in Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi respectively. The project analyzed their works within a comparative framework and in the light of the kind of aesthetic internationalism that prevailed in South Asian literary cultures in the mid-twentieth century, during the period of decolonization and the Cold War. Literary discourse in various South Asian languages in this period tended to be polarized between the seemingly antithetical tendencies of “progressivism” and “modernism,” with writers and intellectuals engaging in heated polemics regarding their political, social, or creative relevance in a decolonizing milieu. The research interpreted these tendencies as two broad facets of a shared, albeit contested, literary radicalism with a discernible internationalist thrust, whose conditions of possibilities were generated by the radical transformations of the short twentieth century. It argued that poetry and poetic discourse at this time constituted a major site for addressing and collectively grappling with issues with considerable political and philosophical import.
Contact
Department of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures
South Asian Institute, Universität Heidelberg
Voßstraße 2, Building 4130
Room: 130.02.09
D-69115 Heidelberg
Phone: +49 (0)6221 54 15276
E-Mail: judhajit.sarkar@sai.uni-heidelberg.de
Consultation hours: by appointment via e-mail