Namaskar, I am Ishan Chakraborty, a person with deafblindness. I am working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Presently I am also pursuing PhD from the samedepartment under the supervision of Professor Ananda Lal. My M. Phil (completed in 2016) thesis was on “Rabindranath Tagore’s Treatment of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in His Plays.”
I have been awarded the Abul Kashem Rahimuddin Samman in 2019 by the Government of West Bengal for my contributions in the field of elocution and Bengali poetry recitation. I have also received the State Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities 2019 in the category of Role Model from the Government of West Bengal. I have worked as one of the coordinators in the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan 2.0 sponsored project, “Bodies of Difference: Pedagogies of the Marginal in the Global South.” I have published many academic papers/articles on critical disability studies in both national and international journals. Some of them are as follows:
- To ‘the Other Senses’: A Dialogue between Visual Arts and Visual Disability, published in InternationalResearch Journal Persons with Special Needs and Rehabilitation Management, Jadavpur University Centrefor Disability Studies; Volume IV, ISSN- 2321-9254.
- “The Disabled Body Beggeth; or, Does It?” Published in The Body Speaketh: Interrogating CulturalConstructions of the Body, by Ramkrishna Mission Vidyamandira.
- Visibility of Blindness: Interrogating Ableism in the System of Higher Education (co-authored withAnirban Mukherjee), published in NUJS Journal of Regulatory Studies (Quarterly) (Online ISSN: 2456-4605) Vol 1 Issue 3.
- “Fashionable Disability: Unveiling Ableism in the Culture of Clothing”. Published in JadavpurUniversity Essays and Studies, Vol. 32, ISSN 0975-3478.
I have participated in and presented academic papers at various national and international conferences andseminars/webinars, including the one titled ‘Criposium virtual Conference’, organised by King’s College, London on 6th & 13 June 2020. The title of my presentation was: “Queer-Cripping Mainstream Bengali Mediain the Context of Covid-19.” I also contribute regularly (in Bengali and English) in webzines and digital portalsof Guruchandali and VARTA.