Faculty of Arts - English

Academic contribution in last five years

Dr. Santanu Biswas is the Coordinator of the Priority Area, ‘Literature, Psychoanalysis and the History of Medicine.’ He has written a monograph on ‘The Signification of Desire in Lacan’, in Harjeet Singh Gill (Ed.) Signification in Language and Culture published by the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla in 2002. He presented a paper entitled ‘Have we exhausted Lacan in the field of Literary Criticism?’ at the International Seminar with Laura Mulvey organized by Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, in September 2003, which has been published in Moinak Biswas (Ed.) Journal of the Moving Image, Number 3 in 2004. A part of his research on Tagore and Freud has been published in the form of the essay ‘Rabindranath Tagore and Freudian Thought’, in Glen Gabbard and Paul Williams (Eds.) International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, London, June 2003, which has been reprinted in Salman Akhtar (Ed.) Freud Along the Ganges: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the People and Culture of India published by New York’s Other Press in 2005. His essay ‘Lacanian Lessons in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’’ will be published in Malabika Sarkar (Ed.) Moneta’s Veil: Essays on the Nineteenth Century by New Delhi’s Pearson soon. He has been Visiting Scholar in the School of International and Political Studies, Faculty of Arts, at Melbourne’s Deakin University from June 2005 to March 2006. He had presented papers on ‘Gora After Lacan’ at the Deakin Masters Seminar in Psychoanalysis in November 2005, and on ‘Lacan’s Antigone Seminars’ at the Seminar on Group Psychology in March 2006. He was also in analysis for the entire duration with Dr. Russell Grigg who teaches psychoanalysis and philosophy at Deakin University, practices Lacanian psychoanalysis at Melbourne and is one of the official English translators of Lacan’s works. He conducted a workshop on Lacan’s Seminar XVII in the Department in December 2006, attended by Dr. Russell Grigg, Dr. Geoff Boucher and Dr. Matthew Sharpe from Deakin University. He directed the All-India Students’ Seminar on ‘Encounters, Accidents, Events: Literary Modernities and the Representation of Culture’ at Jadavpur University in February 2007, and was the Coordinator of the international conference on ‘The Literary Lacan: From Literature to Lituraterre’ held at Jadvpur University on 3 and 4 December 2007. He has given several special lectures on psychoanalysis, Lacan and literature at different places, such as, the Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta, in April 2002, the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, in January-February 2003 and in August 2006, the Department of English, Jadavpur University, in February 2003 and in February 2004, the Department of English, Loreto College, Kolkata, in March 2007, the Department of Bengali, Jadavpur University, in September 2007 and the Department of English, Presidency College Kolkata in 2008. He attended the Seminar on Ordinary Psychosis organized by the Department of Psychoanalysis, University of Paris VIII in July 2008. He is Academic Committee Member of the Centre for Tagore Studies, Jadavpur University, and was Guest Member of the Lacan Circle of Melbourne in 2005-2006.

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