Syantani Chatterjee

Syantani Chatterjee

Research Interests

Toxicity, Environment & Climate Crisis
Human/Animal Relations, Bodies & Medicine
Media, Technology, Infrastructure, Urbanism
War, Nationalism, Displacement, Trauma
Institutions, Law, Governmentality
Language, Social Theory, Critical Theory
Slavery, Colonialism, Race, Racial Capitalism
Archives, Practices of Memory
Gender, Sexuality, Genealogy, Ancestrality

Research Concentrations

Belonging and citizenship; labor; embodiment; discard studies; environmental anthropology; medical anthropology; sensorial ethnography; urban studies.

 

Regions

South Asia; India.

Biography

Syantani Chatterjee is an anthropologist whose research focuses on questions of embodiment, governance, and belonging, with an expertise in South Asia and postcolonial studies.  Her book project, The New Gateway of India: Toxicity, Belonging, and Governance in Contemporary Mumbai, draws on archival and ethnographic research in Mumbai (India) to study the material and non-material impacts on communities of living and working in toxic conditions. She was previously an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania (2020-2021). She received a doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University in 2021. Her research has appeared in academic journals such as ILWCH and PoLAR. She worked as a journalist, and a Bharatanatyam soloist prior to her graduate work. 

Education

Ph.D. Anthropology, Columbia University.

M.A. Anthropology, Columbia University.

B.A. English Literature, University of Delhi (Lady Shri Ram College).

2020. “India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA): Citizenship and Belonging in India.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review. With Natasha Raheja. September 7.

2020. “The Usual Suspects.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review. September 7.

2019. “Labors of Failure: Labor, toxicity, and belonging in Mumbai,” International Labor and Working Class History (ILWCH) 95 (Spring): 49-75.

Courses Taught