Bio
I am Pratiti, a current first-year Doctoral Student in the Department of English, at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. My primary track is Literature and Cultural Theory. I am also enrolled in graduate certificates in Women and Gender Studies and Digital Arts and Culture.
I graduated with an MA in Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley with an emphasis on South Asia. My interests lie in new media, modern and contemporary Bengali literature, and English and Hindi literature related to modern and contemporary Bengal. I also study comics in Bengal and particularly the impact of the French comic series, Tintin, in Calcutta. My other interests lie in science and technology studies and urban humanities. I also have Graduate Certificates in New Media and Urban Humanities from the University of California, Berkeley.
I have completed Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Studies and Research (DipASR) with an Advanced Major in History and minor in Performing Arts at Ashoka University, India. I completed my undergraduate studies at Ashoka University in 2020 with a major in History and a minor in Creative Writing.
I was part of the translation program in the Creative Writing Department at Ashoka University. I translate works from Bangla to English. I am also interested in studying how languages function in social, political, and historical contexts. My first translation, Exiled From Ayodhya (a translation of Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay's Ramayaner Sei Bonobasher Pothe has been published by Bee Books as Exiled From Ayodhya: A journey in search of Ramayana.
My languages are English, Bengali, and Hindi. I have studied elementary French and German.
Teaching
- Graduate Teaching Assistantship | Department of English, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Aug’ 23 - Present
- Fall 2023: ENGLISH 102:001 & ENGLISH 102:002 | College Writing and Research
- Spring 2024: ENGLISH 102:006 | College Writing and Research
- Graduate Student Instructor | Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley Jan’ 22-May'23
- Spring 2023: SASIAN R5B 005: India through the Writer’s Eye | Lead Instructor
Topic: Detectives of West Bengal
- Fall 2022: SASIAN R5A 004: Great Books of India | Lead Instructor
Topic: Tagore in our Space: Visions from the 21st Century
- Spring 2022: SASIAN R5B 003: India through the Writer’s Eye | Lead Instructor
Topic: Detectives in Indian Literature and Cinema
- Graduate Student Instructor | Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley May'22-June 22
- Summer 2022: LINGUIS R1B 002: Endangered Language: Why does Linguistic Diversity Matter?| Lead Instructor
- Readerships | Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley Aug’ 21-Dec’21
- Fall 2021: War, Empire and Literature in East Asia | Professor Andrew Jones
Education
- MA in Asian Studies | University of California, Berkeley, 2023
- Post Graduate Diploma in Advanced Studies and Research| Ashoka University, 2021
- Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History (2020)| Ashoka University, 2020
Research Interest
- Gender Studies
- Travel Literature
- Detective Fiction
- Urban Humanities
- Calcutta
- Performing Studies
- South Asia
Awards and Accomplishments
- Graduate Student Project Award, Women and Gender Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- Swarnjit Arora Award, Asian Faculty and Staff Council, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- Chancellor Fellowship, Department of English, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- Berkeley Centre for New Media Conference Grant Spring 2023
- UC Berkeley Centre for Contemporary India Rapid Response Grant 2023
- UC Berkeley Centre for Contemporary India Rapid Response Grant 2022
- UC Berkeley Graduate Division Conference Grant Summer 2022
- UC Berkeley American Cultures Centre Course Development Grant Summer 2022
- UC Berkeley Graduate Student Instructor Resource Centre Course Development Grant Fall 2022
- Brian Gialketsis SERQueer Scholarship Finalist
- Dean’s List, Ashoka University (Monsoon 2017, Monsoon 2018; Summer 2019, Spring 2020, Monsoon 2020, Spring 2021)
- Gold 2016: Queen's Commonwealth Essay Writing Competition for an essay on The Inclusive Commonwealth
Publications
- Pratiti Ketoki, How Tintin Became Bengali: Understanding Translations as After-Work, French Studies Bulletin, Volume 45, Issue 169-170, Spring 2024, Pages 28–31, https://doi.org/10.1093/frebul/ktae009
- Narrating the ‘Hippie’: Bengali Perceptions of the Trail | Asian American Research Journal, UC Berkeley, Spring 2024 (forthcoming)
- Partition and Fiction: My Tryst with Amitav Ghosh’s Shadow Lines | The Bengal Gazette in June 2023
- On his 112th birth anniversary, Would Hergé have acknowledged the racism in his Tintin comics? | Scroll.in May 2019
- This book of cartoons about BR Ambedkar reveals the casteism (and misogyny) in his critics | Scroll.in July 2019
- What Bhisham Sahni’s ‘Madhavi’ tells us about female agency (or the lack of it) in the Mahabharata | Scroll.in January 2020.
Translation