M. Letizia Alterno
PhD Thesis
"A Narrative of India Beyond History: Anti-colonial Resistance and Post-colonial Negotiations in Raja Rao's Works""
Supervisors
Dr. Anastasia Valassopoulos and Dr. Howard Booth
Background
Editor-in-Chief of the Raja Rao Publication Project (since 2005)
MA (Hons) English Language and Literature, University of Palermo, Italy (1994-2000)
M.Phil (Gold Medal) English Studies (Indian Writing in English), Kakatiya University, Waragal, A.P., India (2003-2004)
Research
My thesis examines Indian author Raja Rao's critically neglected work. I read Rao's production as a strategic, yet problematic, response to hegemonic narrativizations of Indian history which attempts both to propose alternative histories and deconstruct the ontology of modern Western historiography. Rao's often criticised use of essentialism in his works is examined as a strategic deconstructive tool in the hands of the postcolonial writer. I examine both his early fictional and non-fictional production in the 1930s and 1940s and his later work from the 1960s onwards.
Publications and Conferences
November 2008. ""The Adventure of Difference:" Resistance in Alterity and Raja Rao's Anti/Post-colonial Response to British Rule," Invited Speaker, Raja Rao Birth Centenary, Bangalore, India.
In press. Raja Rao: An Introduction, Contemporary Indian Writers Series, (New Delhi: Foundation Books).
Forthcoming. With Rajeshwar Mittapalli, ed. Indian Masculinities and Post-colonial Fiction in English. An anthology of critical essays to be published by Authorspress, New Delhi, 2009.
July 2008. "Re-constructed History in Raja Rao's Kanthapura: Dynamics of Hindu Nationalism and Anti-colonial Politics," Paper presented at the 20th ECMSAS Conference, The University of Manchester, 8th - 11th July 2008.
March 2008. "(A)way to Freedom: Raja Rao's The Great Indian Way." Paper presented at the EACLALS triennial conference, Venice, 27th March 2008.
September 2007. Entries for "Mulk Raj Anand," "Raja Rao," "Kamala Markandaya," "Salvatore Quasimodo," "Attia Hosain," "Kamala Das," "Amitav Ghosh," "Arundathi Roy," in The Little Black Book of Books: A Century of the Greatest Books, Writers, Characters, Passages and Events that Rocked the Literary World, (London: Cassell Illustrated, 2007).
June 2007. "Raja Rao's Reputation: A Penniless Writer Amongst VIPs." Paper presented at the Symposium "The Writer's Reputation: Gender, Time, Geography," Durrell School of Corfu.
September 2006. "Raja Rao: The Writer of a Century." Muse India 8.1.
July 2006. "Raja Rao: An Indian Writer Using Mysticism to Explore the Spiritual Unity between East and West." Guardian 17 July 2006.
June 2006. ""What then Shall that Language Be?" Raja Rao's Dissentient English as a Response to Macaulay's Colonial English." Paper to be given at the Symposium "Empire and Aftermath: Core and Periphery" at the Durrell School of Corfu.
December 2006. "Silence as the Path to Self-discovery in Raja Rao's The Chessmaster and His Moves," article to be published in a forthcoming volume on Raja Rao.
May 2005. "A Spicy Side of English Grammar: British Idioms on Food" ELTA Journal, Vol.5.3.
March 2005. "Sharing Places, De-sharing Cultures: Shared Territoriality and Raja Rao's De-sharing Translation of India," paper presented at EACLALS conference, Malta.
May 2003. "On English as a Foreign Language," ELTA Journal, Inaugural Issue, Vol. 1.1.
December 2002. "The Mystic Cat: Reality and Maya in The Cat and Shakespeare," Kakatiya Journal of English Studies (KJES), Vol. 22.
Teaching
2008/2009: Seminar Leader, course unit ENGL 10021, Reading Literature (University of Manchester); course unit ENGL 10032, Contexts of Writing (University of Manchester).
2007/2008: Seminar Leader, course unit ENGL 10032, Contexts of Writing (University of Manchester).
In 2003, I contributed to the teaching of undergraduate courses on English Prose and Drama to MA students at the Department of English, Kakatiya University, Warangal, India.
I also have experience of teaching in secondary high schools.
Other Interests and Projects
In October 2005 I visited the University of Texas and the Harry Ransom Center, where most of Rao's work is kept. I met Rao and collected interviews and unedited material. I am currently collaborating with his wife on a joint project involving the cataloguing and translation of some of his works into Italian (my first language) and am considering her offer to write a biography after completing my PhD. To know more about the Raja Rao Publication Project and for an online Rao bibliography I compiled in 2003, visit the following pages: www.rajarao.com and http://rajarao.free.fr.
My other academic interests include Indian philosophy and culture, especially Hindu, and contemporary Indian-English literature, in particular the works of Jumpa Lahiri, Manju Kapur and Vikram Chandra.
My email address is Maria.Alterno@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk