Jasodhara Bagchi

Jasodhara Bagchi is a leading Indian feminist critic and activist.

Biography

She was born in 1937 and educated at Presidency College, Kolkata, Somerville College, Oxford, and New Hall, Cambridge. The larger part of her working life was spent at Jadavpur University, where she was Professor of English. She is married to the economist, Amiya Kumar Bagchi.

In 1988 she became the Founder-Director of the at Jadavpur University, in which capacity she led the activities of the centre until her retirement in 1997. She is also one of the founder members of the feminist organisation Sachetana in Kolkata.

Her focus areas of research include women's studies, women's writings, 19th century English and Bengali literature, the reception of Positivism in Bengal, motherhood and the Partition of India.

She initiated and spearheaded the pioneering Bengali Women Writers Reprint Series edited by the School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, which continues to bring out new editions of writers such as Jyotirmoyee Devi. She was also Chairperson of the until April 2008.

Books (authored, edited, and co-edited)

• Literature, Society, and Ideology in the Victorian Era (edited volume), (1992)
• Indian Women: Myth and Reality (edited volume), (1995)
• Loved and Unloved: The Girl Child in the Family (with Jaba Guha and Piyali Sengupta)(1997)
• Gem-like Flame: Walter Pater and the 19th Century Paradigm of Modernity (1997)
• Thinking Social Science in India: Essays in Honour of Alice Thorner......
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