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Home: Our Faculty: Brooklyn College Faculty:

Swapna M. Banerjee

Associate Professor   Department: History   Location: 507s Whitehead Hall   Phone: 718-951-5000 x2815   Fax: 718-951-4504   Email:

Swapna M. Banerjee is an associate professor of history. Her research examines the intersection of class, gender, and ethnicity in the construction of national identity in colonial India. Her book Men, Women, and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in Colonial Bengal (Delhi/NY: Oxford University Press, 2004) employs the lens of the employer-servant relationships to examine the construction of national identity in colonial Bengal. She has received many grants and awards, including NEH-funded American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Research Fellowship and the Whiting Fellowship from Brooklyn College for excellence in teaching. Her current research is on the history of children and childhood in colonial India. She has articles and reviews published in the Journal of Social History, Journal of Asian Studies and Gender and History. She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Calcutta, India. Education: Ph.D., Temple University - 1998 (History) Areas of Expertise: Professor Banerjee's area of research is colonial India with special focus on gender, class and family history in the region of Bengal. She is particularly interested in inter-class relationships in construction of identity and closely examines the history of lower social groups such as servants and children. Books and Publications "Domestic Service as Paid Work for Women" and biographical profiles of four Bengali women (Basanti Devi, Bina Das, Santi Ghose, and Rashsundari Debi). Oxford Encylcopedia of Women in Global History. Ed. Bonnie Smith. New York: Oxford Univeristy Press. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2008 "Children's Literature in Nineteenth Century India: Some Reflections and Thoughts?" GRAAT (Groupe de Recherches Anglo-Américaines de Tours), a refereed journal from Université Francois Rabelais, Tours. France. 337-51. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2007 "Child, Mother, and Servant: The Discourse of Motherhood and Domestic Ideology in Colonial Bengal." Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and Colonial Experience in South Asia. Eds. Avril Powell and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley. 17-50. "Subverting the Moral Universe: 'Narratives of Transgression' in the Construction of Middle-Class Identity in Colonial Bengal." Beyond Representations: Colonial and Postcolonial Constructions of Indian Identity. Ed. Crispin Bates. 77-99. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2005 "Down Memory Lane: Representations of Domestic Workers in Middle-Class Writings of Colonial Bengal." Journal of Social History 37.3: 681-708. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2004 Men, Women, and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in Colonial India. Delhi/New York: Oxford University Press. Reviewed in The Journal of Asian Studies 66.2, May 2007: 564-66; The American Historical Review 111.5, January 2007; Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2007; Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 34, 2006: 632-33; The Statesman (daily newspaper in India), September 2006; and Desh (biweekly periodical in Bengali), October 2006. (Books and Publications: Book) 2004 "Domestic Manuals on Mistress-Servant Relationships: Constructing Bengali Middle Class Identity through "Appropriate" Codes of Conduct." Modern Historical Studies 2, June-July 2001. Rabindrabharati University, Calcutta, India. 7-36. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2002 Awards, Honors and Fellowships RF-CUNY Grant. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007 Whiting Fellowship for excellence in teaching, awarded by Brooklyn College. (Awards and Honors) 2007 Humanities Scholarship Award from Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Fund Committee of the University of Florida - Gainesville. (Grants and Fellowships) 2003 NEH-funded American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Research Fellowship. (Awards and Honors) 2002 Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums "A Life Less Ordinary--Reading the Life of Baby Halder and Tracing the Trajectory of Domestic Service in India." Waged Domestic Work and Making of the Modern World Conference. University of Warwick, England; and "Where Have the Mothers Gone? The Changing History of Children and Childcare in India?" From the World of Wet Nurses to the Networks of Family Day Care Providers: Childcare Provided by Non-Relatives Working in the Domestic Sphere International Conferece. University of Fribourg, Switzerland. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008 "The Father and the Child: Fatherhood as a Vector of Masculinity in Colonial India?" European Social Science and History Conference. Lisbon, Portugal; and "A Life Less Ordinary and Uneven Developments in the Life of Women Domestics in India." Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association. Washington, D.C. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008