About Dr. Pompa Banerjee:

Professor Banerjee teaches courses in early modern literature and culture. Her research examines the literary and cultural dimensions of Europe’s cross-cultural encounters in the global Renaissance, especially in the ways they shape identity and space in the age of discovery. She is also interested in European witchcraft and the gendering of the supernatural. She is the author of Burning Women: Widows, Witches, and Early Modern European Travelers in India (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and essays on Renaissance literature and travel narratives. She is currently working on Shakespeare and travel.

Publications:

Book:

Burning Women: Widows, Witches, and Early Modern European Travelers in India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Essays:

“You must wear your rue with a difference: Gertrude, Ghazala, and the Sati in Haider.” Forthcoming in the New Arden Hamlet. 2020.

 “Cosmopolitanism and ‘Strange flesh’ in Antony and Cleopatra.” Parergon 35:1 (2018): 119-39.

 “'Accents yet Unknown': Haider and Hamlet in Kashmir.” Shakespeare Survey 71 (2018): 18-25.

 “Racing Cleopatra.” Theatre International Journal vol. 7 (2013): 1-17.  

“Just Passing:  Abbé Carré, spy, harem-lord, and ‘made in France.’” In Emissaries in Early Modern Literature. Ed. Brinda Charry & Gitanjali Shahani. Ashgate, 2009.  85-110.

“Postcards from the Harem: The Cultural Translation of Niccolao Manucci’s Book of Travels.” In The “Book” of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage 1250-1650. Ed. Palmira Brummett. Brill, 2009. 241-82 

“The White Othello: Turkey and Virginia in John Smith’s True Travels.” In Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Emergence of the North Atlantic World, Ed. Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet. University of Pennsylvania Press. 135-151 

“The Gift: Economies of Kinship and Sacrificial Desire in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.” Studies in the Humanities 29: 2 (2002): 137-49. 

“Hard to Swallow: Women, Poison, and Hindu Widowburning, 1500-1700.” Continuity and Change 15:2 (2000): 187-207. 

“Milton’s India and Paradise Lost.” Milton Studies 37, Ed. Albert C. Labriola (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999): 142-65. 

“Burning Questions: Widows, Witches, and Early Modern European Travel Narratives of India.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29:3 (Fall 1999): 529-561. 

“’I, Mephastophilis’: Self, Other, and Demonic Parody in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.” Christianity and Literature 42.2:  221-241.

Web Publications:

www.folger.edu/institute/jamestown;

The National Endowment for the Humanities and The Folger Shakespeare Institute website

2001 “The Turkish Influence on English Drama, 1581-1625.”

2001 “Powhatan as Emperor.” (With John Wood Sweet)

Expertise Areas:
Shakespeare, Milton, Renaissance literature, early modern culture, travel literature, European witchcraft

Courses Taught:

• ENGL 2600:  Great Works in British & and American literature

• ENGL 3798: International Short stories [International Literature]

• ENGL 3661: Shakespeare [undergraduate]

• ENGL 4000/5000: Shakespeare [graduate]

• ENGL 4520/5520: The English Renaissance

• ENGL 4530/5530: Milton