Samanwita Sen

samanwita sen
DPhil Candidate
St Antony's College

Thesis title: Writing "Inhumanity" in Indigenous Literature

Supervisor: Pablo Mukherjee

 

Research Interests: World Literatures; Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures; Indigenous Literature; Literature and Law; Post-Modernism; Transnationalism

 

Doctoral Research: This thesis examines the various ways in which indigenous personhood has been constructed and negated within North America - legally, visually, discursively - and how contemporary writers leverage the plasticity of fiction to envision a new representational praxis to redress such negations. Drawing upon the seminal work of Joseph Slaughter, Elizabeth Anker, and Bernadette Meyler, I explore the homology between procedures of literary-cultural representation and legal recognition. I also investigate how literature’s sustained attention to minoritised subjects may meaningfully intervene within the “exclusionary anatomy of human rights paradigms” (Elizabeth Anker). Current authors under investigation include Tommy Orange, Angeline Boulley, Marcie Rendon, Angela Berritt, and Terese Mailhot.

 

My research is fully funded by the Oxford-Hong Kong Jockey Club Graduate Scholarship. I am grateful to have also been 1 of 2 fully funded scholars under the D.H. Chen Foundation Scholarship Programme during my undergraduate degree at Oxford.

 

Conferences and Talks:

  • “Can the present save the past? Can the living save the dead?” (Han TWR): The Body as Political Vessel and Memorial Conduit in the Works of Han Kang, EGSA Annual Conference, "Grief in Conversation," 2026    
     
  • “The Ironies of Nationhood”: The Chauvinist and Liberatory Dimensions of the Nation, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, “International Conference on Postcolonial Studies: Trajectories and Transitions of (Post)-Colonialism", 2024
     
  • “The Ironies of Nationhood”: The Chauvinist and Liberatory Dimensions of the Nation, CEEISA-ISA International Conference 2024 (Croatia), “Knowing the Global-Local: Imagining Pasts, Debating Futures", 2024
     
  • “The Ironies of Nationhood”: The Chauvinist and Liberatory Dimensions of the Nation, Loughborough University Network (LUNN) “Nations and Nationalisms 2.0: Theories, Practices, and Methods, International Postgraduate Conference", 2024
     
  • “Can the present save the past? Can the living save the dead?” (Han TWR): The Body as Political Vessel and Memorial Conduit in the Works of Han Kang, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, “Violence and Society, International Conference”, 2024
     
  • “The Ironies of Nationhood”: The Chauvinist and Liberatory Dimensions of the Nation, Ireland India Institute, Dublin City University “Seventh Annual South Asia Conference”, 2024
     
  • “The Ironies of Nationhood”: The Chauvinist and Liberatory Dimensions of the Nation, New Voices in Postcolonial Literature Bimonthly Seminar Series, 2023       
                        
  • Committee Member and Co-organiser of Postcolonial Fault-lines Conference (2022): Selected as the youngest committee member on the organising panel of Postcolonial Fault-lines, an online conference on postcolonial and global studies hosted by postgraduate students from the University of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow