Sayandeb Chowdhury studied at St Xaviers’ College (BA), Jawaharlal Nehru University (MA), and Jadavpur University (MPhil), and holds a doctorate from the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University Calcutta. Sayandeb has taught for over a decade at Ambedkar University Delhi. He was a UGC Fellow at the Department of English, Jadavpur University (2001), UKNA Fellow at International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden (2015), and Charles Wallace UK Fellow (2016).

His essays have been published in Film International, Journal of South Asian History and Culture, South Asia Review, European Journal of English Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, and thematic anthologies published by Palgrave Macmillan (2016, 2018), Routledge (2016, 2017, 2019,) Vernon Press (2025), and university presses of Brussels (2017), Amsterdam (2019), Manchester (2026) and Edinburgh (2027). His monograph Uttam Kumar: A Life in Cinema was published by Bloomsbury in 2021, and is being re-published as a special centenary edition in 2026. His forthcoming books include a co-edited volume of essays on playwright and actor Utpal Dutt (Bloomsbury), a monograph on the cultural history of colonial urban photography in Calcutta (under contract with Routledge UK), a work of translation (Seagull Books), and a short monograph on Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) for British Film Institute.

Sayandeb also contributes regularly to the cultural press, and has written, among others, for Huffington Post, The Monthly Review, Art India, Outlook, Indian Express, TheWire, Scroll, Business Standard, The Hindu; Deccan Herald, National Herald, DAG Journal; Biblio, Caravan, Café Dissensus, Critical Collective and in Bengali for Anandabazaar Patrika and the literary periodical Desh. His other completed project is a public history archive of caricature and graphic storytelling in Bengal which he co-curated in 2020-2021. More about his work and interests can be found at https://sayandeb.in/

Research

Sayandeb Chowdhury’s teaching and research interests are in the history of visuality in colonial South Asia; metropolar modernisms in Europe and South Asia; the history of humour, and Shakespeare & adaptation studies. Challenging conventional postcolonial positions of received modernity, his doctoral thesis interrogated how multiple modalities of cultural and technological modernity authorised colonial urban visualities to transform the colonial into a site of encounter rather than that of imperial gaze and utilisation.  He has taught courses on European literature and the modern city, the short story, humour in the 20th Century, how Shakespeare thrives in other tongues; and photography as cultural theory and praxis.

Publications

Chapters In Scholarly Volumes 

1. ‘Populism as ‘Art’ in the Age of Despots, or How Shah Rukh Khan Found Himself on the Wrong Side of the Right’, in From Caligari to Hitler Revisited: Cinema, Populism, and the Politics of Fear, (Ed) Bernd Herzogenrath (under review at Edinburgh University Press).
2. ‘‘The Rubble of the Double in Despair’, in Helena Gurfinkel (ed) ReFocus: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Edinburgh University Press (2027).
3. ‘The Bard Presides, the Plutocrat Perishes, the Stranger Perseveres’ in Mallarika Sinharoy and Sayandeb Chowdhury (Ed), Utpal Dutt: Playwright, Performer, Propagandist, Bloomsbury India, 2027.
4. ‘Slapstick State: Politics as Play in Modified India’ in Walking with the Enemy: The Art of Subversive Mimicry in the Post-Truth Era.  Chapter 2. Manchester University Press, 2026, Print ISBN 9781526169488.
5. ‘Football Fanship and Fragmented Fraternity in India: The Uneasy Fame of a Colonial Game’, in Daniel Noemi Voionmaa (ed) World Cup! History, Politics, and Art of the Beautiful Game, (with Dr Rajendran Narayanan), Chapter 7, Vernon Press, pp 119-145; Print ISBN 979-8-8819-0271-1.
6. ‘The Spectral Coloniality of Calcutta’s Ochterlony’, in Henco Bekkering, Adèle Esposito, Charles Goldblum (Ed) Ideas of the City in Asian Settings; Ch 2: 45-80. Amsterdam University Press, 2019. ISBN 9789462985612.
7. ‘The Indiscreet Charms of Spatial Ugliness: An Enquiry into a (Post)-colonial City’, in Ela Przybylo and Sara Rodrigues (Ed) On the Politics of Ugliness, Ch 8: 171-192; Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. ISBN 9783319767826.
8. ‘In Shakespeare’s Do We Trust?’ (co-authored with Zehra Mehdi) in Salman Akhtar (Ed) Mistrust: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms; Ch 5, pp 83-106; Karnac Books/Routledge, London. 2017. ISBN 9781782204886.
9. ‘Le pont sur le fleuve Hooghly: Modernité, Mobilité, Visualité’ [Bridge over river Hooghly: Modernity, mobility, visuality] in Tatiana Debroux, Yannick Vanhaelen, Judith le Maire (Ed) L’entrée en ville: Aménager, Expérimenter, Représenter; Ch 8, pp 131-145; Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles. 2017. ISBN 9782800416168.
10. ‘Unveiling the Anthropo(s)cene: Burning Seas, Cinema of Mourning and the Globalisation of Apocalypse’, Charlotte Mathieson (Ed) Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea 1600-Present; Ch 9, pp 217-238. Palgrave Macmillan, London. 2016. ISBN 978-1-137-58115-0 (Print)

Articles In Scholarly Journals 

1. ‘Bollywood’s Propaganda Wheels Have Been Set in Motion’, Economic and Political Weekly [EPW] 54:21. Published May 21, 2019.
2. ‘A Postcolonial Iconi-city: Re-reading Uttam Kumar’s cinema as metropolar melodrama’, Journal of South Asian History and Culture [Bengali Cinema: Star Texts, Genre, Tropes] 8:2:171-185; Routledge/T&F, 2017. ISBN 194724987.
3. ‘Indian Partition and the Making of New Scopic Regime in Bengali Cinema’ European Journal of English Studies. [Spl Issue Poetics and Partition]. 19.3:255-270. Routledge/T&F. 2016. ISSN 1382-5577.
4. ‘The Endangered City in Rituparno Ghosh’s Early Cinema of Confinement’, Journal of South Asian History and Culture, 6:2. Pg 277-289. 2015. Routledge/T&F, ISBN 194724987.
5. ‘Ageless Hero, Sexless Man: A Possible Pre-History and Three Hypotheses On Satyajit Ray’s Feluda’, South Asia Review, [Satyajit Ray Special Issue]. 36.1:109-130. Routledge/T&F, 2015. ISSN 0275-9527.
6. ‘The Heroic Laughter of Modernity: The Life, Cinema and Afterlife of Bengali matinee idol Uttam Kumar’, Film International. 10:04/05:82-91; Intellect, London. 2012. Print. ISSN 1651-6826. DOI: 10.1386/fint.10.4-5.82_1

Essays Republished 

• The Indian Partition and the Making of New Scopic Regime in Bengali Cinema, selected from 2015 as part the 20 articles for the 20th anniversary edition of European Journal of English Studies (Routledge/Taylor & Francis. ISSN 1382-5577).  The link: http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/ah/neje-20th-anniversary-vsi.
• ‘The Endangered City in Rituparno Ghosh’s Early Cinema of Confinement’, republished in Sangeeta Dutta, Kaustav Bakhi & Rohit Dasgupta (Ed), Rituparno Ghosh: Cinema, Gender and Art, Ch 5: 104-122. Routledge/Taylor & Francis, London et al. 2016.
  ISBN 9781138666788 (print). 9781315666761 (ebk).
• ‘A postcolonial iconi-city: Re-reading Uttam Kumar’s cinema as metropolar melodrama’, republished in Popular Cinema in Bengal: Genre, Stars, Public Cultures, (Ed) Madhuja Mukherjee & Kaustav Bakshi, Routledge South Asian History and Culture Series; Routledge/Taylor & Francis, London et al. 2019. ISBN 9780367330828. Print.

Teaching Modules

Core Courses 

1. The Canon
2. Genre: Poetry of Modernity 

KCCS Courses 

1. Literature and the Arts 

Discipline Elective Courses 

1. Brief Encounters: The Short Story Through Histories 
2. Humour in the 20th Century
3. Shakespeare on Screen
4. Cinema and the Idea of the Political