Faculty

Shweta Rao Garg has a PhD in English from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee, an M.A. in English from the Centre of Linguistics and English, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is a recipient of the Fulbright Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) in 2010.

Her collection of poetry, Of Goddesses and Women has been published by Sahitya Akademi in 2021. She has co-created a graphic novel for sensitising undergraduate students called, The Tales from Campus: A Misguide to College, published by Crossed Arrows in 2022. Her edited volume, The English Paradigm in India: Essays in Language, Literature and Culture was published by Palgrave in 2017.

She is also a visual artist. Her standpoint as a postcolonial feminist scholar is reflected in her art. She has exhibited her artworks at three solo shows and several group shows. The first show was a postcolonial re-interpretation of Shakespeare called “The Bard in Acrylic” (November 2018). The second show was based on the lives of urban Indian women called “Of Goddesses and Women” (December 2019). Her third exhibition, “Swaas: An Art Intervention on Loss, Hope and Gratitude” (March 2022), was an open-air, public art project that provided the community with a platform to share its experiences during the pandemic.

Shweta believes in the transformative quality of literature and art; she uses them to challenge widespread dominant narratives on gender, race and caste. Details about her art can be found at: https://shwetaraogarg.com/

English Studies, Gender Studies, Performance Studies

Books:

• The Tales from Campus: A Misguide to College, Crossed Arrows, 2022.
• Of Goddesses and Women, Sahitya Akademi, 2021.
• English Paradigm in India: Essays in Language, Literature and Culture. Edited by Shweta Rao Garg and Deepti Gupta. Palgrave Macmillan. Singapore. October 2017.

Book Chapters:

• “Whose Bollywood is it anyway? Exploring critical frameworks for studying popular Hindi cinema” in Critical Pedagogy, Race, and Media :Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education Teaching  Edited By Susan Flynn and Melanie A. Marotta Routledge. London, 2022.
• With Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri. “Indian Wife in American Kitchen: A Study of Wife”. Bharati Mukherjee: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Somdatta Mandal. Pencraft Books. New Delhi, 2010. 134-143.

Edited Journal Issue:

Shweta Rao. “Food in Indian Literature” Muse India, May-June 2011.
( http://www.museindia.com/feature.asp?id=37 )

Selected Journal papers:

• Shweta Rao Garg. “Performing Protests: Women and Performance in Manipur”, IACLALS Journal  Volume 4.
• Shweta Rao Garg. “Eat, Cook, Reinvent: The Female Traveller and the Tourist Gaze in Contemporary Bollywood”. APPERCEPTION : Journal of the Department of English, Volume 8. July 2015- June 2016. Published August 2016.
• Shweta Garg and Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri. “Interpreting a Culinary Montage: Food in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies”. ASIATIC. Volume 6 Number 1 2012. pg 73-83.
• Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri and Shweta Rao, “India on a Platter: A Study of Gurinder Chadha and MayedaBerges’s Cinematic Adaptation of The Mistress of Spices” Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC). Gale-Cengage Learning, US. Volume 316, 2012. pg 28-34.
• Shweta Rao and Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri. Ghastly Gravies: Food Images and Body in Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife and Jasmine. Co-authored with Khushu-Lahiri. Journal of School of Languages. Volume 16. 2011.
• Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri and Shweta Rao. “Cookery or Creativity? Culinary Fiction of Divakaruni, Maladi and David”. In-Between :Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism. Volume 20-1,2 2011. pg 112-127.
• Co-authored with Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri. “The Theatre of Subversion: A Case from Kannada Theatre.” ASIATIC. Volume 3, Number 1 June 2009. pg. 69-78.
  ( http://asiatic.iium.edu/my/v3n1/index.htm ).

• Language and Literature
• Introduction to Drama
• Creative Writing
• Women’s Writing
• Introduction to Narratology