Personal Statement:
I study and teach the social and cultural history of South Asia with a focus on commodities, capital, and agrarian history. My current work explores the role of British colonialism in reshaping the agrarian frontier of eastern Bengal and the political economy of intoxicant commodities in the nineteenth and twentieth century. I am broadly interested in labor history, peasant politics, popular culture, social movements, and gender and empire.
Research and Teaching Interests:
- South Asia (1500 – Present)
- British Empire (1688 – Present)
- Indian Ocean World
- Commodity and Agrarian History
- Gender and Labor
- Internationalism and Marxist thought
- Historical Methods
Selected Publications:
- Utathya Chattopadhyaya, “Empire and Indifference,” Victorian Literature and Culture, 2019
- Utathya Chattopadhyaya, “Review. Stolte and Schrikker eds. World History: A Genealogy,” Itinerario, 2019
- Utathya Chattopadhyaya, “Labor: Identities and Time under Empire” in Kirsten McKenzie ed. A Cultural History of Western Empires in the Age of Empire 1780-1920 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018) 119-146.
- Utathya, Chattopadhyaya, Talking History: E.P. Thompson, C.L.R. James, and the Afterlives of Internationalism, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, 41(1), 2015, 111-128.
- Utathya Chattopadhyaya, “Time to move on?” Kritik, June 26, 2014.
Courses Taught:
Previous Courses:
- HIST 88 – Survey of South Asian History
- HIST 9 [Historical Investigations: Methods and Skills] – Commodity History
- HIST 9: Commodities and Labor in Colonial South Asia
- HIST 189M: South Asian Public Culture
- HIST 201C [Advanced Historical Literature]: South Asia and the Indian Ocean
- HIST 202 – Historical Methods
Honors and Professional Activities:
- 2020 Faculty Career Development Award
- 2016 Thomas and Barbara Metcalf Junior Research Fellowship in Indian History, American Institute of Indian Studies.
- 2015 Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) Prize for Research in the Humanities, University of Illinois.