Sandeep Banerjee

Section 07 · Lectures, Broadcasts, Papers

07Talks

Public lectures, radio and interviews, invited talks, symposia, and conference presentations.

Public Lectures2

  1. 2024
    “Singing in Dark Times.” Invited public lecture, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Crow’s Theatre, Toronto, 7 January 2024.Aired on CBC Ideas, 22 February 2024.
  2. 2023
    “Colonialism and its Discontents in South Asia.” Invited lecture, South Asians at the Tire, Canadian Tire Corporation. 1 May 2023.On Zoom.

Interviews and Panels7

  1. 2026
    “Picturesque Peaks: Visual Aesthetics of the Himalaya.” Interview, Himalayan Crossroads. Aired 24 March 2026.
  2. 2025
    “How this 19th-century Indian feminist flipped the colonial travelogue on its head.” Panelist, CBC Ideas. Aired 10 September 2025.
  3. 2025
    “The Yeti in History, and Bengali and World Literature.” Interview, Anticlockwise: Books, Art, Philosophy. Aired 14 July 2025.
  4. 2023
    “Muhammad Iqbal: One of the Greatest South Asian Thinkers of the 20th Century.” Panelist, CBC Ideas. Aired 25 January 2023.
  5. 2022
    On Space, Utopia, and Indian Decolonization. Interview, New Books Network. Aired 14 October 2022.
  6. 2022
    “The Year 1913: The World on the Brink.” Panelist, CBC Ideas, Stratford, 24 July 2022. Aired 3 November 2022.
  7. 2020
    In conversation with Prof. Sumathi Ramaswamy, Duke University. Bangalore International Centre, Bangalore. 16 October 2020.On Zoom.

Invited Talks9

  1. 2026
    “Mountain Gloom, Mountain Glory: Excursions into Himalayan Aesthetics.” Indian Institute of Technology, Bhilai. 7 September 2026.
  2. 2023
    “Haunted by History: The Literary Lives of the Bengali Ghost.” Center for Research in Posthumanities, Bankura University. 23 September 2023.On Zoom.
  3. 2020
    “The Utopianism called Decolonization: Thinking with Tagore.” Arts and Humanities Division and Freedom Lab, Duke Kunshan University. 11 June 2020.On Zoom.
  4. 2019
    “Singing of Space: The Patriotic Lyric as a Global Genre.” Centre de recherche des études littéraires et culturelles sur la planétarité, Université de Montréal. 21 March 2019.
  5. 2017
    “Singing the Nation into Being: Space, Politics, and the Nationalist Song in Colonial India.” Indian Ocean World Centre Speaker Series, McGill University. 20 April 2017.
  6. 2017
    “Imagining the Postcolony: Spatial Utopianism in the Age of Empire.” Department of English, University of Houston. 3 April 2017.
  7. 2017
    “Landscapes of Utopia: Imagining the Postcolony in the Age of Empire.” Faculty Keynote, Department of English Graduate Conference, McGill University. 17 February 2017.
  8. 2016
    “Landscaping the Colonial Himalaya: The Images and Texts of Samuel Bourne.” Department of English, Jadavpur University. 15 December 2016.
  9. 2015
    “Of Human Bondage: Reading Frederick Douglass in a Global Context.” Le Moyne College. 24 September 2015.

Invited Symposia5

  1. 2022
    “রণজিৎ গুহ ও মার্ক্সবাদ: দ্য এলিমেন্টারি অ্যাস্পেক্টস অব পেসান্ট ইন্সারজেন্সি নিয়ে কিছু কথা” [Ranajit Guha and Marxism: Some Thoughts on Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency]. Symposium on Ranajit Guha at his centenary, Jagannath University, Bangladesh. 3 June 2022.In Bengali. On Zoom.
  2. 2021
    “Re-orienting British Studies in a Global Context.” British Studies Colloquium, Yale University. 7 May 2021.On Zoom.
  3. 2019
    “Forms and/of History.” On Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network by Caroline Levine. Poetry Matters Symposium, McGill University. 29 March 2019.
  4. 2018
    “Modernism in Bengali Poetry.” Lyric and Mediation in South Asia, Poetry Matters Symposium, McGill University. 23 March 2018.
  5. 2017
    “Decolonization, Language, Literature.” Symposium on the work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, McGill University. 5 April 2017.
With Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o during his visit to McGill University, April 2017.

Conference Presentations19

Show all
  1. 2026
    “On Ranajit Guha and Mao Zedong; or, Travels in the Communist Translation Zone.” MLA Annual Convention, Toronto. 9 January 2026.
  2. 2025
    “The Contradictions of Nature: Capitalocene and the Colonial Himalaya.” AAS-in-Asia Conference, Kathmandu. 3 June 2025.
  3. 2024
    “(Another) Journey to the West: Cold War Travels of the Monkey King in India.” Archives of World Socialism Conference, University of Massachusetts, Boston. 20 April 2024.
  4. 2023
    “Performing biraha: The Cultural Lives of a Theological Concept.” Annual South Asia Conference, Madison. 21 October 2023.
  5. 2023
    “Between Solidarity and Critique: Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084.” AAS Annual Conference, Boston. 18 March 2023.
  6. 2021
    “The Pen-front as Gun-front: The Cold War and the Political Aesthetic in South Asia.” ACLA Annual Meeting. 11 April 2021.
  7. 2020
    “Combined and Uneven: Scattered Speculations on a Colonial Guidebook.” Living in Cities Conference, Jadavpur University, Calcutta. 6 February 2020.
  8. 2019
    “That ‘petty bourgeois yarn of the shoddiest kind’: Re-Reading Tagore’s Home and the World.” ACLA Annual Meeting, Washington DC. 9 March 2019.
  9. 2018
    “Thinking about Decolonization and Utopia Today.” Historical Materialism Conference, Montréal. 19 May 2018.
  10. 2018
    “Reading Ghosts Historically.” MLA Annual Convention, New York. 6 January 2018.
  11. 2017
    “Utopia and Artistic Praxis in Postcolonial India: Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Haroun and the Sea of Stories.” ACLA Annual Meeting, Utrecht. 8 July 2017.
  12. 2017
    “Dipesh Chakrabarty, Anthropocene, and the Politics of the Im/Possible.” MLA Annual Convention, Philadelphia. 5 January 2017.
  13. 2015
    “‘Interminable Economic War … Between Capital and Labour’: Tagore’s Theorization of Nationalism and Peripheral Modernity.” Annual South Asia Conference, Madison. 23 October 2015.
  14. 2014
    “Appropriating the Aesthetic: Culture and Hindutva in Contemporary India.” Annual South Asia Conference, Madison. 19 October 2014.
  15. 2014
    “An Incredible Commodity: Branding India for Global Consumption.” ACLA Annual Meeting, New York. 22 March 2014.
  16. 2012
    “Heroism in the ‘Dark’ Continent: Race, Class, and Masculinity in Victorian Bengali Juvenile Fiction.” AAS Annual Conference, Toronto. 17 March 2012.
  17. 2011
    “The Contested Landscape: British and Indian Conceptions of Nineteenth-century Calcutta.” Annual South Asia Conference, Madison. 22 October 2011.
  18. 2010
    “Samuel Bourne and the Spatial Production of the Victorian Himalaya.” Annual South Asia Conference, Madison. 16 October 2010.
  19. 2010
    “The City as Nation: Delhi as the Symbol of the Indian Nation in the Victorian Bengali Bhadralok Imaginary.” City in South Asia International Conference, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka. 18 July 2010.

Posters11

2026 Mountain Gloom, Mountain GloryIntersections series, Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Bhilai
2023 Haunted by HistoryDe-scribing Non-Human Futures conference, Bankura University
2022 Ranajit Guha at his centenarySecond session of the Bengali symposium, 3 June 2022
2021 The Future of British StudiesBritish Studies Colloquium panel, Yale University
2020 Terrestrial LessonsBIC Streams, Bangalore International Centre
2019 Singing of SpaceCELCP, Université de Montréal
2019 Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, NetworkPoetry Matters roundtable, McGill University
2018 Lyric and MediationPoetry Matters, McGill University
2017 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o roundtableCritical Social Theory at McGill
2017 Imagining the PostcolonyDepartment of English, University of Houston
2017 Landscapes of UtopiaFaculty keynote, English graduate conference, McGill University