Expertise

American Literature(s), South Asian and International Film, First-Year Writing

Biography

Srimati Mukherjee is Professor of English on the Teaching Track. As a scholar, Mukherjee specializes in modern and contemporary American literature with a particular emphasis on race; South Asian cinema and South Asian cultural studies together with global cinemas; and intersections of immigration and diaspora. She is the author of Women and Resistance in Contemporary Bengali Cinema: A Freedom Incomplete (Routledge, 2016), a book in which she focuses on contemporary Indian directors and how these auteurs represent the cultural antithesis of women’s roles, particularly in terms of resistance, revolution, autonomy, and change vis-à-vis hegemonic structures. Following the book publication, she was invited to speak at the University of Pennsylvania’s Cinema Studies Colloquium Series. Mukherjee is also the author of twenty-one shorter pieces of writing: essays in anthologies, articles in journals, and short fiction, thirteen of these in refereed publications. Her critical writings engage American and diasporic literatures and cinema studies. After receiving a Presidential Humanities and Arts Award from Temple University in 2017 and her 2021 spring sabbatical, she completed two collections, one of her short fiction and the other a translation project with a critical introduction. These recent projects address international migrations and negotiations; dimensions of women’s labor; job loss; and class-based disempowerment on the global scene.

She serves on the Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association’s Translation Studies forum. Mukherjee was accepted and invited to be a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome in June-July 2024 where she worked in the Modern Italian Studies category researching Etruscan influence on contemporary American literature. In March 2024, she was lead organizer of the Temple Graduate English Colloquium: “African American Lives and Art: Prevailing in the Shadow of Necropower.” She is co-coordinator of the English Department’s Study Abroad Programs and Initiative; and also a Fellow of the Center for Ethics, Diversity, and Workplace Culture at Temple. In 2021, she was founding member of the Writers of Color Reading and Discussion Series, a continuing project supported by the College of Liberal Arts and Center for the Humanities at Temple.

Mukherjee has been at Temple University since 1999 and taught a range of courses for English, American Studies, Women’s Studies, and the First-Year Writing Program. In summer 2017, she offered two courses on cinema in London for the English Department's Study Abroad Program: "The City in English Culture," a program founded and directed by Professor Steve Newman. In recent years, her students have won awards such as the Sara M. Halpen Award in the Humanities (CLA 2013); the General Education Award for Academic Excellence (2012); the General Education Diamond Peer Tutor Award (2013 for spring 2014); the Loretta C. Duckworth Prize in English (2015); the Randy and Samantha Deglin Memorial Award in English (2018); and the Dennis and Joan Lebofsky Award in the First-Year Writing Program (2016, 2017). In 2020, her student won the English Department's Robert Marler Award, given annually for the best undergraduate essay.

Recently, Mukherjee has served on and chaired the Faculty Senate International Programs Committee and the College of Liberal Arts Promotions Committee for Teaching Track faculty. She also completed a second three-year term as elected representative to Faculty Senate from CLA. From fall 2024, she will begin a three-year term on the CLA Executive Committee as the elected representative from the Teaching Track. Currently, she also serves on the CLA Teaching Track Merit Committee. In spring 2020, she was one of ten recipients of a Temple University Faculty Senate Service Award.

Selected Publications

Books

• Women and Resistance in Contemporary Bengali Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 2016.

Critical Articles (Refereed)

• Cinematic Representations of Rabindranath Tagore's Views of Nationalism: The Figure of the 'Patriot' in Ghare Baire and Elar Char Adhyay."  Tagore, Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism: Perceptions, Contestations and Contemporary Relevance. Ed. Mohammad A. Quayum. Routledge India, 2020
• “Borrowing, Becoming, and the Question of the Self in Sob Choritro Kalponik.” Published online in South Asian History and Culture 1 July 2015.
• “‘Negative Difference’ and Its Role in Writing: Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Among the White Moon Faces.” Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature 8.1 (2014): 131-42.
• “A Not So Banal Evil: Rokeya in Confrontation with Patriarchy.” Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature 7.2 (2013): 82-94.
• “Chokher Bali: A Historico-Cultural Translation of Tagore.” Jump Cut 54 (2012)
• “The Impossibility of Incestuous Love: Woman’s Captivity and National Liberation in Rituparno Ghosh’s Utsab.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 29.5 (2012): 401-08.
• “Introduction.” “Figuring Shadows,” by Shyamal Bagchi. Scritture Migranti 2 (2008): 5-7.
• “T.S. Eliot: Poet of My Bengali Childhood.” The International Reception of T.S. Eliot. Eds. Elisabeth Daumer and Shyamal Bagchi. New York: Continuum, 2007. 278-83.
• “Nation, Immigrant, Text: Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha’s Dictee.” Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits. Eds. Shirley Geok-lin Lim et. al. Philadelphia, Temple UP, 2006. 197-215.
• “Feminism in a Calcutta Context: Assault, Appeasement, and Assertion in Rituparno Ghosh’s Dahan.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22.3 (2005): 203-10.

Fiction (Refereed)

• “Light Is Something which Is Golden in Color.” Twenty-Two Asian Short Stories. Ed. Mohammad Quayum. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish, 2016.
• “Mama’s Boy.” Xavier Review 33.2 (2013): 160-71.
• “When It Is Green and Not Blue.” Feminist Studies 32.3 (2006): 620-31.

Courses Taught

• English 4498 Studies in Modern American Literature: Race and Identity in the Works of William Faulkner and James Baldwin

• English 3323: 19th Century American Fiction

• English 3241: English Romanticism

• English 3711: Intermediate Film (Also taught in London for the English Department's Study Abroad Program; adapted to "The City in English Culture")

• English 3221: Advanced Shakespeare I

• English 3222: Advanced Shakespeare II

• English 0701: Introduction to Academic Discourse
• English 0822: Shakespeare in the Movies (Also taught in London for the English Department's Study Abroad Program; adapted to "The City in English Culture")
• English 0802: Analytical Reading and Writing
• English 0868: World Society in Literature and Film
• English 0902: Honors Literature Reading Writing
• English 2097: Introduction to English Studies
• English 2111: The Short Story
• English 2197: Women in Literature (cross-listed Women’s Studies)
• English 2302: Survey of American Literature II
• English 2601: Introduction to Postcolonial Literature
• English 2712: International Film
• English 0258: Issues in Modern Literature
• English 0150: Asian American Women Writers (cross-listed American Studies)
• English 0150: Introduction to Asian American Literature (cross-listed American Studies)
• Women’s Studies 0801: Border Crossings: Gendered Dimensions of Globalization
• Women’s Studies 0863: Living for Change: Autobiographies of Women in Radical Social Movements