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Rakhee Kalita Moral

Rakhee Kalita Moral

Professor

Ph.D. : Gauhati University

Research Interests:

Currently, I work at the intersections of gender, literature and society. Of particular interest is literary theory and cultural studies with a focus of conflict and its representation in Indias North East.
Joined the University in Sep 1, 1990

Phone: 9871928887
Email: rakhee.moral@cottonuniversity.ac.in

Vidwan Profile
About Research Projects Teaching Research Paper Publications Book publication relating subject/research concerned Chapters/Articles publications in Books (Research Oriented) Book publication other than subject concerned Other Informations

About

Rakhee Kalita Moral holds a PhD in American Literature, having worked on T.S. Eliot’s genealogy and poetic identity. With keen interest in modernist literature, gender studies,  postcoloniality and literary theory, which she has taught for long and also published in, Moral’s work found its way logically into Northeast studies, through its literature and culture. She has edited two research volumes, on Literature and Culture (Macmillan 2005) and on Gender and Society. Her postdoctoral research in Gender with reference to contemporary Northeast India was conducted at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi where she was awarded a Nehru Fellowship (2013-2015) and has been published as an occasional monograph and as research papers in international and national journals. Earlier, Moral has published in postcolonial literature and given several international presentations in the field (OUP, Sage , Macmillan etc) while also being a resource person at several academic courses and conferences. In 2015, she was Consulting Researcher with a feminist project of Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) on women, peace and conflict, which was published in an edited volume (Zubaan Academic 2017). A Visiting Faculty of the Centre for Study of Social Systems (C-SSS) at JNU in 2016, she delivered several lectures in different Centres of JNU and in Delhi University on her work during that period. 

 

In 2017, she joined Humanities across Borders Program of IIAS, Leiden University, a research initiative funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, USA aimed at decolonising knowledge through new pedagogic interventions in universities across the world. This has led her to conduct research on women through their narratives in Northeast India (Cotton University is a partner institution of the HaB program) and a publication of the project is forthcoming shortly (2020). Currently she is collaborating with Jadavpur University’s School of Women’s Studies (SWS), on a research project in Oral Histories, Memories and Women’s Movements (2019-2020) as a RUSA expert and a visiting faculty for 2020, she works at the intersections of gender, literature and culture and is Coordinator of the newly instituted Centre for Women’s Studies, Cotton University. In 2019, she organised a national workshop on gender equity and inclusion, held for the first time at Cotton University in association with WISCOMP, a leading feminist organisation of India and conducted a Gender Audit with her team. Moral has also received the Rotary International’s Group Study Exchange fellowship to Italy, when she taught at colleges and universities in the summer of 2002. Keenly involved in the academic and corporate life of erstwhile Cotton College and the present Cotton University, Moral was Professor and Advisor to the Symposium and Debates Section of the Cotton College Union Society (2009-2012) and has also been heading Cotton University’s Internal Committee since 2019. Currently, Moral heads the Centre for Women's Studies, Cotton University 

Teaching

Postcolonial literatures, Gender Studies, Literary Theory, North East India Literature and Culture

Research Projects

Making Women Count for Peace (2014-15), Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

Ashild Kolas, PI

Rakhee Kalita Moral, Co PI

 

Where Women Make Another Tribe

Rakhee Kalita Moral, PI

(Humanities Across Borders Program), 2017-2020

IIAS, Leiden Supported by Andrew Mellon Foundation, USA

 

Currently collaborating with School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University on a project Memories, Cultures and Movements: Archiving Women’s Histories under the RUSA Scheme of International and National Academic Collaboration for Northeast India (2019-2020)

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Research Projects

slno Name of the Project Name of the Principal Investigator Name of the Copi Name of the Funding agency Type (Government/Non-Government) Year Funds sanctioned (INR in lakhs) Duration of the project
1 Where women make another tribe. Mobilisations and Narratives from Nagaland Dr. Rakhee Kalita Moral HOB, IIAS-Mellan Program Non-Government 2018 13.79314 (8120 USD + 11,000 USD) 4 years

Research paper publications till 2021

  1. “Scripting the Freedom Song: The Moment of Dissent in Assam” in RivistaDegliStudi Orientale (University of Rome) Vol XCI, Supplement 2, Dec 2018
  2. Rumour, Rhetoric, Rebellion: Negotiating the Archive and the Witness in Assam. NMML Monograph. Perspectives in Indian Development Series. No. 31, 2015 (online edition, www.nehrumemorial.nic.in)
  3. “The Woman Rebel and the State:  Making War, Making Peace in Assam”. EPW. Review of Women’s Studies. Special Issue. Vol 49, Nos. 43 & 44, 1 November, 2014
  4. ‘“Living and Partly Living”: The Politics of Freedom and the Women of ULFA’, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Occasional Paper: History and Society. New Series #31: 2013
  5. “Of Ends and Beginnings: War, Peace and the Interregnum”, Seminar# 640  December ( Assam: The Unstable Peace), New Delhi: 2012
  6. Locating Identities and Otherness: Conflict, Representation and the Politics of Belonging in Northeast India’, Negotiations: Journal of the Department of English, Cotton College, Vol 2. No 1 (2012)
  7. Book Review: Tilottoma Misra, Ramnabami Natak. South Asian History and Culture. Vol 1 #1: 2010 (165-189) 2010
  8. “Gender, Power, Insurgencies: Women in Conflict”, Concerns and Voices. A Journal of Cotton College Women’s Forum. Guwahati: 2009
  9. ‘Readings from No Man’s Land: Anurag Mahanta’s Owlingor Jui, Biblio (ed) Rukmini Bhaya Nair. Vol XII. No 5&6, June 2008
  10. ‘A Poetics of Place: Pamuk’s Istanbul, Modernity and the Imaginary of the City’, Journal of the Department of English, Gauhati University (ed) Nandana Dutta. Vol.6: 2007
  11. “Creative Signs in Ibsen’s Last Plays: The Problem of the Artist and his Aesthetic”, Negotiations: Journal of the Dept of English, Cotton College. Vol 1. No 1, 2004 (1-15)
  12. “T.S. Eliot’s Education and the Boston Years”, Cotton College Research Journal, Vol I , 2001

Book publication relating subject/research concerned

  1. In the Shadow of the Blue Hills: Gender, Mobilities and Resistance (Routledge) forthcoming 2021
  2. Once Upon the Hills : A Handbook of Feminist Voices and Everyday Practices in Nagaland. 2020 
  3. Voices and Concerns: Gender and Society in NE India. (Eds) Cotton College Women’s Forum. 2010
  4. At the Frontier and Beyond: Essays in Literature and Culture. (Eds)  Macmillan 2005

Chapters/Articles publications in Books (Research Oriented)

"Reimagining the Pastoral: Metaphors and Meanings of the Everyday in Assam and Indias Northeast" in Materiality and Visuality in Northeast India. An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Eds) T. Nongbri and R Bhargava. Singapore: Springer, 2021, ISBN: 978-981-16-1969-4.

  • “Narrating India’s Northeast: Contexts, Spaces, Representations” in Innerscape (ed) Arunabha Bhuyan. Papyrus, 2019
    1. “Demobilised, Dispossessed, Disappeared…? In Search of ULFA’s Female ex-Combatants” in Women, Peace and Security in Northeast India (ed) Ashild Kolas. Zubaan 2017
    1. “Frames of Peace? Counterinsurgency and the Politics of Gender in Postconflict Assam” in Fixity and Fluidity: History, Politics and Culture of North East India (eds) Manjeet Barua, et al. JNU Publications: 2016

    1. “Beyond Borders and Between the Hills: Voices and Visions from Karbi Anglong, or Whose Hills are These Anyway?’ in Emerging Literatures from Northeast India: The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity (ed) Margaret Zama. IIAS- Sage Publications: 2013
    1. “Writing Terror: Men of Rebellion and Contemporary Assamese Literature” in Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India (ed) Sanjib Baruah, Center for Policy Research. Oxford University Press: 2009
    1. “Eliot, Exile and the Idea of Tradition” in At the Frontier and Beyond. Literature and its Relations .(eds) Gautam Sarma and Rakhee K. Moral. Macmillan India: 2005
    1. “Filling the Gaps: Narrative Memory and Amitav Ghosh’s Art of Telling” in Reflections on Literature, Criticism and Theory.(eds) K.C.Baral, Venkat Rao and Sura P. Rath. Pencraft International: 2004
    1. “’Slip, Sliding Away’”: The Postcolonial Transformation of the Assamese and the Politics of Identity” in The Northeast in Identities: Local and Global. (eds) P.C. Kar and K.C. Baral. Forum on Contemporary Theory.MS University,Baroda. Pencraft International:2003

    1. “In Time of the Breaking of Nations”: The Glass Palace as Postcolonial Narrative. In Amitav Ghosh. Critical Perspectives. (ed) Brinda Bose. Pencraft International. 2003                                                                                                                                                                     

    Book publication other than subject concerned

    Once Upon the Hills. A Handbook of Feminist Voices and Everyday Practice in Nagaland (2020 )under research project of the HaB Program)

    Other Informations

     
    1. Nehru Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi, 2013-2015
    1. Consultant with PRIO , Norway on its research program on NE India and Nepal, Making Women Count for Peace, 2014-2015
    1. Visiting Fellow, C-SSS, JNU, 2016
    2. Leading NE India Project of Humanities Across Borders Program, IIAS, Leiden (2016-2020) as PI, 2017 till date
    3. Head, Centre for Women’s Studies, Cotton University, 2020 till date
     

     

     

    Invited Talks and Public lectures:

     

    1.  “Guns and the Gospel:  Mediating Life and Liberty in the Naga Hills” in the panel Unlocking the Wor(l)d: Symbol, Sound and Sensation in Postdisciplinary Methodologiesat the International Conference of Asia Scholars, ICAS 11, University of Amsterdam held in July 16-20, 2019.
    2. Public lecture on “Feminists, Deviants, Historians: Writing Beyond Violence in NE India” at the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, 11 June 2019
    3. The Saifuddin Kichlew Memorial Lecture, “Women as Writers, Women as Warriors: Narratives of Conflict and Peace in Northeast India”, in Jamia Millia Islamia University on 10 September 2018
    4. Special Interdisciplinary Lecture, entitled, “Rebels, Feminists, ‘Bad Girls’: Women and Nation in the Time of Insurgency,” under the aegis of From the Margins Lecture Series of Ashoka University, New Delhi on 23 July, 2018.
    5. Inaugural talk, “Multidisciplinarity and Recent Research Trends in the Arts and Humanities” in the National Seminar on Research Methodologies in HSS, Cotton University , 2 July,  2019
    6. Keynote Speech, “The Visual and the Visceral: Recasting NE from Within and Without” at the National Seminar on at Satyavati College, University of Delhi, 31 January 2018
    7. Keynote address on “Poetry for Peace, Poetry for Brotherhood” at the Grand Guwahati Poetry festival at the Vivekananda Kendra, Guwahati on 20 January 2018
    8. “Conflict and Literature in Northeast India,” lecture delivered at Satyavati College, Delhi University in the first academic talk hosted by the Northeast India Society on 20 September 2017
    9. “Writing the Northeast: Poetics and Politics of Literature,” invited lecture at Cotton College, organized by the Department of English at the Manik Chandra Borooah Hall , Cotton College on 8 April 2017
    10. Led the Panel on Northeast Perspectives: Insider or Outsider at River Talks, Royal Global University, 22 October 2016
    11. “Scripting the Freedom Song: ULFA and the Moment of Dissent in Assam (1980s–2000s)” at the International conference of the European Association of South Asian Studies (EASAS), at University of Warsaw, July 26-29 , 2016
    12. “Demobilised, Dispossessed…Disappeared? In Search of the Women Rebels of ULFA” in Multitude and Democracy, International Conference by OKDISCD and PRIO, Norway. Guwahati 19-20 February, 2016
    13. “Peacemakers, Elite drivers, Civil Society in Dialogues across Faultlines of Territory and Peoples: Bridging State, Ethnicity and Nation in North East.” SAFHR and Heinrich Boll Stiftung organized workshop, December 11-14, 2015. New Delhi
    14. “Self and the Nation: Women, War and Peace” in Seminar on Narratives of Contemporaneity in India, LITMUS 2015, Lady Sri Ram College, New Delhi 27 February, 2015
    15. Speaker at Women and Peacebuilding : A Policy Dialogue in  WISCOMP/ PRIO Roundtable in the session on Armed Conflict and Women: The Protection- Participation Conundrum at IIC, 21 February, 2015
    16. “Contested Narratives: Rumour, Rhetoric and Rebellion in Assam” in International Conference on Reimagining India’s Northeast: Networks, Narratives and Negotiations at Centre for Northeast Studies and Policy Research, Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi, 4-6 February 2015
    17. “What Price Freedom? The Return of ULFA’s Woman Combatants, Reintegration and Transitional Justice,” Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU, New Delhi, 17 October 2014
    18. “The Woman Rebel and the State: From Combat to Community.” Internal Security Center, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses ( IDSA), New Delhi, 15 September 2014
    19. “Rumour, Rhetoric Rebellion: Negotiating the Archive in Assam.” International Conference on The Long Indian Century: Historical Transitions and Social Transformations. NMML, Teen Murti (in collaboration with Yale University and IIAS, Shimla) 2-4 July 2014
    20. “Encountering the State: The Woman Rebel and Peace Politics in Assam.”  Seminar at the Center for Women’s Studies, SSS, JNU on 15 April 2014
    21. “Closing the Gap: Academia, Activism and Women in India’s Northeast.” Plenary Speaker at All India Women’s Studies Conference, Guwahati, 3-6 February 2014
    22. Panelist, Cultures of Peace: Zubaan and AIWS Conference, Cotton College State University, Guwahati, 2 February 2014
    23.  “Women, Insurgency and the Making of Rebels: Between Silence and Truths.” Seminar at the Center for Northeast Studies and Policy Research, Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi on 22 October 2013
    24. “Narratives of Resistance, Narratives of Reconciliation: Discoursing Conflict in India’s Northeast” at the one-day workshop I organised at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library on Writing the Northeast: the Poetics and Politics of Representation on 30 September 2013
    25. “Writing in the Time of Conflict: Beyond Anger and Fear in India’s Northeast.” ICHR Lecture Series New Delhi, ICHR, 1 August 2013
    26.  Invited talk on Literatures from the Northeast: Conflict and After, hosted by English Literary Association, St Stephen’s College, Delhi University on 26 July 2013
    27. “Gender, Conflict and Displacement in India’s Northeast.” Plenary speaker at the conference of International Association for Studies in Forced Migration (IASFM) on, Kolkata 7-9 January 2013( Also available on YouTube: IASFM)
    28. “Spaces of Freedom: Representation of Women in Conflict in Assam.” Resource person at National conference on Contemporary NE India: Issues, Challenges and Prospects. Manipur University, Imphal, 6-7 November 2012
    29. “Frames of Peace? Counterinsurgency and the Politics of Gender in Postconflict Assam.” Resource person for National workshop on Fixity and Fluidity: History, Politics and Culture of North East India.  North East India Studies Program. JNU, New Delhi, 18-20 March 2012
    30. Resource person at National Seminar, NE India in Transition: Understanding Patterns of Change and Transformation Since 1985. North Guwahati College, 22-23 June 2012.
    31. “The Literature of Violence and South Asia.” Panelist at the International Conference on Contemporary Writings from Sri Lanka. Department of English, Gauhati University. 22-24 Feb 2012
    32. “The Politics of Gender and Notions of Freedom: The Case of ULFA.” International Conference on Changing Patriarchies and Gendered Constructs: Gender History in NE India. Assam University, Silchar and MAKIAS, Kolkata, 18-20 Jan 2012
    33. “Living and Partly Living: Notions of Freedom, the Politics of Violence and the Women of ULFA”. Invited to speak at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi, 2 December 2011
    34. “Beyond Borders and Between the Hills: Recovering Voices and Visions from Karbi Anglong.” Resource person at National Seminar on Emerging Literatures from Northeast India: The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity. Mizoram University-IIAS(Shimla), Aizawl, 10-11 March 2009 (Published as book, Sage 2013)
    35. “Locating Identities in Defamiliarised Spaces: Conflict, Representation and the Politics of Belonging in Northeast India.” International Conference on Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging. Interdisciplinary-Net, Mansfield College, Oxford University, 25-28 September 2009. Published in Conference proceedings.
    36. “Modern Fiction in English.” Resource person at National Seminar on Approaches to Teaching Fiction. Organized by Department of English, Patkai Christian College, Nagaland, 10-12 September 2007
    37. “Bakhtin and Outsideness: In Search of Mr Naipaul or Reading “Magic Seeds”. National Seminar on Mikhail Bakhtin and the Aesthetics of Transgression. Gauhati University, 4-6 January 2005
    38. “Towards a New Internationalist Saidean Theory.” International Conference on Rereading Edward Said. Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 12-14 August 2004
    39. “Creative Signs in Little Eyolf and When We Dead Awaken: The Problem of the Artist and his Aesthetic.” Regional Seminar on Ibsen. Gauhati University, 27-28 Feb 2003. Published in Negotiations. Department of English Journal, Cotton College, Vol 1.1, 2004, 1-15
    40. “’Slip Sliding Away’ Social Transition and the Politics of Identity in NE India.” International Seminar on Constructing Identities: Local and Global. Forum on Contemporary Theory, and MS University Baroda. Shillong, 15-18 Dec 2003

     

    Awards and Distinctions:

    1. Visiting faculty/ National Expert under RUSA at SWS, Jadavpur University, March 2020
    2. Visiting Faculty, CSSS, JNU, February 2016
    3. Nehru Fellowship, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi ( 2013-2015)
    4. Selected for Rotary International Professional Fellowship under Group Study Exchange, Rotary International, USA, to teach in secondary level education institutes and universities Northern Italy, May-June 2001
    5. Awarded Teacher Study Grant (pre-doctoral work), American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad, June-July 1992 for American literature