Rochona Majumdar

Majumdar - Quantrell
Professor in Department of Cinema and Media Studies, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations
Foster Hall 215
Office Hours: By Appointment
773.834.2966
Ph.D., The University of Chicago
Research Interests: Art cinema, Indian cinema, postcolonial theory and history, gender and sexuality

Biography

Rochona Majumdar is a historian of modern India with a focus on Bengal. Her writings span histories of gender and sexuality, Indian cinema especially art cinema and film music, and modern Indian intellectual history.  Majumdar also writes on postcolonial history and theory.  

Majumdar's first book, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal challenges the assumption that arranged marriage is an antiquated practice. Through extensive and meticulous archival research, Majumdar demonstrates that in the late colonial period Bengali marriage practices underwent changes that led to a valorization of the larger, intergenerational family as a revered, “ancient” social institution, with arranged marriage as the apotheosis of an “Indian” tradition.  Marriage and Modernity was shortlisted by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (Social Science short-list) in 2011.  

Majumdar's interest in postcoloniality led to her second work, Writing Postcolonial History, where she analyzed the impact of postcolonial theory on historiography.

Her interests in the culture and aesthetics of mass democracy led Majumdar to study cinema, in particular Indian cinema. Her third book Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony is an analysis of global art cinema in independent India. It is also a book about art cinema as a mode of doing history in a postcolonial setting.

Majumdar teaches and writes on conceptual and intellectual history. She is currently working on two projects. The first addresses subalternity, postcolonialism, and contemporary moves towards the decolonial. The second is a collaborative project funded by the University of Chicago Center in New Delhi. Majumdar is the principal investigator in this project entitled Enlightenment in the Colony: A Global history of the Hindoo/ Presidency College with Professors Upal Chakrabarti and Sukanya Sarbadhikary (Presidency University).

Majumdar’s work has been supported by the American Institute for Indian Studies and the Harry Frank Guggenheim foundation. She has been a faculty fellow at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, and a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Emotions, Berlin and IWM, Vienna.

Majumdar also writes for the Indian ExpressDaily O, and Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali). A more detailed list of Majumdar's publications are available on https://chicago.academia.edu/RMajumdar

Work with Students

Majumdar advises graduate students working on modern Indian history and culture. Her welcomes inquiries from graduate students interested in histories of Indian cinema, gender and sexuality, urban histories, and South Asian intellectual history. She advises a range of BA honors and Masters theses on similar themes. She serves on dissertation committees in the departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Cinema and Media Studies, History, English, Anthropology, and the Divinity School. 
 

Selected Published Articles

Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021

“Song Times, the Time of Narratives, and the Changing Idea of the Nation in Post-Independence Cinema.” Special issue on media archeology, Boundary 2. February 2022.

“Postcolonial Theory: Then and Now.” In The Routledge Companion to History and Theory, edited by C.M. van den Akker. October 2021.

“Writing Postcolonial History: Origins, Expansion, Challenges.” In New Approaches in History, edited by Peter Burke and Marek Tamm, 49–74. London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2018.

“Art Cinema: The Indian Career of a Global Category.” Critical Inquiry 42, no. 3 (Spring 2016): 580–610.

“Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimonials and the Marriage Market in Bengal, c. 1875–1940.” Journal of Asian Studies 63, no. 4 (November 2004): 911–935. Reprinted in Caste in Modern India, vol. 2, edited by Tanika and Sumit Sarkar, 133–166.  New Delhi: Permanent Black; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.

Teaching

Autumn Quarter 2023

CMST 24110: India on Film

 

Previously taught courses include: Postcolonial and Decolonial History and Theory (CCCT 20704), Film and the Moving Image (Paris; CMST 14400), India in Film: Imaginations of a Decolonial Nation (MLAP 45970), Gender and Sexuality in World Civilizations I (GNSE 15002), Screening India: Bollywood and Beyond (CMST 24112), South Asia as a Unit of Study (SALC 40000), Radical Cinema in India (CMST 24106/CMST 34106), Gender and Sexuality in World Civilizations (GNSE 15002), Liberalism and Feminism in India, Film and the Moving Image (CMST 14400)