Madhurima Sen

Thesis title: The Unquiet Front: Bangladesh War Literature and Its Discontents 

Supervisor: Professor Santanu Das

Research interests: South Asian literature, postcolonial studies, war studies, life writing, gender studies, migration studies, subaltern theory, translation, graphic narratives, oral history, camp studies

Doctoral research: My research explores self-consciously literary fiction related to and inspired by the 1971 Bangladesh war alongside various sources such as political pamphlets, advertisements, newspaper reports, documentaries, and photographs. I aim to draw attention to the residues and revenants of the war in Bangladeshi cultural life through their representation (or lack thereof) in fiction. In the process, I interrogate the Bangladeshi discourse of martyrdom, sacrifice, and nationalism and highlight the uncomfortable silences in the official war narrative. The postcolonial backdrop of the war is central to my interpretation. By illustrating the tension between war writings and postcolonial nation-building processes, I emphasize the importance of studying non-canonical voices from the Global South and demonstrate the value of introducing new categories and vocabularies into the war studies discipline, thereby opening nuanced discussions about non-European wars and nation-state formations through subthemes of gender, ethnicity, language, and class.