Shivani Arulalan Pillai

Thesis Title:  ‘A dancing, colliding, taunting army’: Interrogating the role of memory in the works of Rohinton Mistry and Orhan Pamuk

Supervisor:  Professor Pablo Mukherjee

Research Interests:  Memory Studies, South Asian Literatures, Postcolonial and World Literatures, Literature in Translation, Life-writing, Modern and Contemporary Indian History, Modernism, Material and Visual Cultures, Space and Landscape Studies.

Doctoral Research:  Situated at the interface of memory studies and postcolonial literature, my doctoral thesis seeks to interrogate the role of memory in the works of the Indo-Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry and the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk by bringing memory discourses from across fields like cultural studies, anthropology, history, psychology, behavioural economics, museum and archival studies in dialogue with postcolonial literary theory. In this regard, my thesis will probe into the phenomenon of the ‘staging of memory’ as postulated by Astrid Erll and its subsequent manifestation in the oeuvres of both writers as lived experiences, non-human objects, remembrances, agents and sites of memory, the history/memory barrier, and so on.