Monograph
[Manuscript in-progress] The Home and the World in Postcolonial Print Culture: Dev Sahitya Kutir and Bengali Children’s Publishing (1940-1975)

Co-Edited Collection

B is for Baldwin: An Alphabet Tour of the Baldwin Library. Under lead editorship of Suzan Alteri and produced by The Baldwin Editorial Collective (Suzan Alteri, Poushali Bhadury, Kenneth Kidd, and Laurie N. Taylor). Gainesville, FL: LibraryPress@UF, 2022. 

https://librarypress.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/b-is-for-baldwin-an-alphabet-tour-of-the-baldwin-library/

Refereed Journal Articles

[Forthcoming] “Reframing the Bard in Bengali Children’s Literature: Dev Sahitya Kutir and the Postcolonial ‘World Classics’ Canon.” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. Special Issue on “Shakespeare in Bengal.” Eds. Amrita Dhar and Amrita Sen. Expected 2024.

“There is No Such Thing as a Straight Woman”: Queer Female Representations in South Asian Graphic Narratives.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 22.4 (2018): 1-11.

“Metafiction, Narrative Metalepsis, and New Media Forms in The Neverending Story and the Inkworld Trilogy.” The Lion and the Unicorn 37.3 (Sept. 2013): 301–326.  

“Fantastic Beasts and How to Sketch Them: The Fabulous Bestiary of Sukumar Ray.” South Asian Review 34.1 (July 2013): 11-38.  

“Fictional Spaces, Contested Images: Anne’s ‘Authentic’ Afterlife.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 36.2 (Summer 2011): 214-237.  

“Pedagogical Preoccupations in Montgomery.” Jadavpur University Essays and Studies XXIV (2010): 91-108.

Book Chapters

[Forthcoming] “Translating the ‘World’: ‘Classics’ and Canonicity in Postcolonial Bengali Children’s Literature.” Book History in India Vol. 4. Eds. Swapan Chakravorty and Abhijit Gupta. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, expected 2024.

“Punching Up, Punching Down: Anticolonial Resistance and Brahmanical Ideologies in Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon.” Dust Off the Gold Medal: Rediscovering Children’s Literature at the Newbery Centennial. Eds. Sara L. Schwebel and Jocelyn Van Tuyl. New York: Routledge, 2021.

Taylor, Laurie N., Poushali Bhadury, Elizabeth Dale, et al. "Digital Humanities as Public Humanities: Transformative Collaboration in Graduate Education." Digital Humanities, Libraries and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Networks, and Community. Eds. Kate Joranson and Robin Kear. Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing, 2018.

Book Reviews

Rev. of Mary F. Pharr and Leisa A. Clark (eds.), Of Bread, Blood and The Hunger Games: Critical Essays on the Suzanne Collins Trilogy. IRSCL. International Research Society for Children’s Literature. 2013. Web. <http://www.irscl.com/review_bread_blood.html>

Rev. of Michelle Superle’s Contemporary English-language Indian Children’s Literature: Representations of Nation, Culture and the New Indian Girl. The Lion and the Unicorn 36.2 (April 2012): 217-221.

Rev. of Kara Keeling and Scott Pollard (eds.), Critical Approaches to Food in Children's Literature. The Lion and the Unicorn 35.2 (April 2011): 189-194.

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(Selected)

Invited Talks

“Desire and Punishment in Queer Desi YA Literature.” Keynote speaker. 2022 Jadavpur University International Children’s & Young Adult Literature Conference: “Narratives of Criminality, Punishment and Social Justice in Children’s and Young Adult Literature.” Department of English, Jadavpur University in collaboration with the Association for Children's Literature in South Asia. Kolkata, India. August 2022.

“The Female Detective Figure in Dev Sahitya Kutir’s Krishna and Sikha Series.” International Webinar. Department of History, Sadhan Chandra Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal, India, July 2020.

“The Mysterious Case of Deb Sahitya Kutir and the Pioneering Female Detectives of Bengal.” University of North Florida Asia Council Lecture Series. Jacksonville, FL. April 2017.

“Aspects of Deb Sahitya Kutir’s Early Detective Fiction Series.” New Research in the Humanities 8. School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University. Calcutta, India. August 2014.

Conferences

“Representations of War in Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon.” Childhoods of Color Conference. Madison, WI, September, 2019.

“The American ‘Classic’ in Translation: Creating a Canon of World Children’s Literature in India.” 39th Association for Asian American Studies Conference. Madison, WI, April, 2019. 

“Series Fiction and the Sleuth: the First Female Detectives in Bengali Print Culture.” American Historical Association. Chicago, IL, January, 2019.

“Growing Up with Genocide: Coming of Age during the 1947 Partition in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India.” MTSU International Holocaust and Genocide Studies Conference. Murfreesboro, TN, April 2018.   

“Navigating the Digital: The Changing Landscape of State and Public Library Collections in Kolkata.” Emory Digital Humanities Symposium. Atlanta, GA, April 2018.

Co-Leading workshop on “Case Studies and Business Plan Development Workshop on Strategies for Creating a Program for Paid Student Internships/Assistantships in the Digital Humanities,” with Laurie Taylor, Hélène Huet, Brian Keith, Julian Chambliss, and Kalle Westerling. HASTAC 2017. Orlando, FL, November 2017.

“Harold and Little Black Sambo in the Baldwin: Intersections of Race, Materiality and Digital Pedagogy in the Special Collections Classroom.” 44rd Annual Conference of the Children’s Literature Association. Tampa, FL, June, 2017.

“Researching Deb Sahitya Kutir’s Genre Fiction, 1940-1964: An Overview.” Invited Participant, “Turning the Page: New Directions in South Asian Book History,” International Workshop, UChicago Center in Delhi. New Delhi, India, March 2017.

“In a Faraway Land: Childhood and the Spatial Imagination in Carol Ann Duffy.” 43^rd Annual Conference of the Children’s Literature Association. Columbus, OH. June 2016.

“The Female Sleuth in Early Bengali Children’s Crime Fiction Series.” 42^nd Annual Conference of the Children’s Literature Association. Richmond, VA. June 2015.

“Cross-pollinated Crimes: Western Genre Fiction and Early Bengali Children’s Crime Fiction Series.” 2015 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference. New Orleans, LA. April 2015.

“Liminal Spaces, Liminal Identities: Memoryscapes in Anne’s House of Dreams.” 10^th Biennial L.M. Montgomery Conference. Charlottetown, PEI, Canada. June 2012.

“Lost in Translation?: World Classics in/as Bengali Comics.” 39^th Annual Conference of the Children’s Literature Association. Boston, MA. June 2012.

“Metatextuality across Media.” 6^th Annual Children’s Literature Symposium. Sarasota, FL. February 2012.

“The Bengali and His Food in Narayan Gangopadhyay.” 38^th Annual Conference of the Children’s Literature Association. Roanoke, VA. June 2011.

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(Selected)

National/International

ChLA Faculty Research Grant; awarded by the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA); June 2018

2016-2018 HASTAC Scholar; awarded by the HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) Scholars Program; November 2016-October 2018

Marion Jemmott Fellowship; awarded by the Taraknath Das Foundation, The South Asia Institute, Columbia University; November 2016

CLIR Mellon Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Original Sources (2013-2014); awarded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR); July 2013-June 2014

2013 IRSCL Research Grant; awarded by the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL); June 2013

ChLA Hannah Beiter Graduate Student Research Grant; awarded by the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA); June 2012

Middle Tennessee State University                  

Digital Humanities Faculty Learning Community (FLC) grant; funded by the MTSU Learning, Teaching, and Innovative Technologies Center, with addl. funding by the College of Liberal Arts and the Walker Library. Co-proposed with Dr. Eric Detweiler; AY 2019-2020. 

Faculty Research and Creative Activity Awards Committee (FRCAC) Grant; awarded by the FRCAC, MTSU; Summer 2018.

University of Florida

CLAS Dissertation Fellowship; University-level award by College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Spring 2016

Dept. of English Graduate Student Teaching Award; 2015-2016

Alumni Fellowship; University-level award sponsored by Dept. of English; 2010-2014

T. Walter Herbert Fellowship; Dept. of English; 2008-2010

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Poushali’s primary areas of research are International and Comparative Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Digital Humanities, South Asian Book History and Cultural Studies. Her current book project is entitled, The Home and the World in (Post)Colonial Print Culture: Deb Sahitya Kutir and Bengali Children’s Publishing (1940-1975). Poushali’s peer-reviewed publications include articles in Journal of Lesbian Studies, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, South Asian Review and The Lion and the Unicorn, among others. She is also co-editor (along with Kenneth Kidd, Suzan Alteri and Laurie Taylor) for B is for Baldwin: An Alphabet Tour of the Baldwin Library (LibraryPress@UF, 2022).  

She has been the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships over the past decade. She was a 2013-2014 CLIR Mellon Fellow for Dissertation Research in Original Sources, awarded by the Council on Library Information and Resources and the Andrew W. Mellon foundation. She also has been awarded research grants and fellowships from the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA), the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL), and the Taraknath Das Foundation at the South Asia Institute, Columbia University, among others.

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Middle Tennessee State University

Graduate Seminars

• British Children’s Literature and Postcolonial Responses
• Children’s Literature in the Anglophone World

Undergraduate Courses 

Upper Division

• Children’s Literature
• Literature for Adolescents
• Queer Young Adult Literature
• Children’s Literature Around the World
• Fantasy and Science Fiction in Young Adult Literature
• Global Literatures in English

Sophomore Literature

• The Experience of Literature
• Fantasy and Science Fiction in Young Adult Literature
• War, Migration, and Refugees in Children’s Literature

First Year Writing

• Expository Writing: Literacy for Life
• Research and Argumentative Writing

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