Jasodhara Bagchi

Jasodhara Bagchi was born in 1937 in Kolkata and educated at Presidency College, Kolkata (which was then affiliated with the University of Calcutta), Somerville College, Oxford, and New Hall, Cambridge.

Jasodhara Bagchi joined Jadavpur University in 1964 after having taught English at Lady Brabourne College, Calcutta.

Bagchi had a long, fruitful, and cordial association with the Department of English, Jadavpur University, which she retired from at the age of sixty. She served as Professor in this department from 1983, was Head of the Department from 1986-1988, and coordinated, in some crucial early years, the UGC Special Assistance Programme, which later became the Centre for Advanced Studies in English. Professors Sajni Mukherji and Supriya Chaudhuri, her friends and colleagues at this department, edited for her a distinguished Festschrift in 2002: Literature and Gender: Essays for Jasodhara Bagchi. Contributors to this included Bagchi's cherished teachers, friends, former students, and colleagues, such as Peter Dronke, Kitty Scoular Datta, Himani Bannerji, Malini Bhattacharya, Sheila Lahiri Choudhury, Supriya Chaudhuri, Tanika Sarkar, Bhaswati Chakravorty, and Aditi Dasgupta. Prof. Bagchi remained a regular and active participant in seminars and lectures at the department of English till her death, and was also a member of its Board of Studies for some years after retirement.In a short span of time, she came to be recognised for her immense dedication to her work and to her students. Promoting a culture of research is considered as her most significant contribution to the Department of English at Jadavpur University.[2] She was married to the economist, Amiya Kumar Bagchi.

In 1988 she became the Founder-Director of the School of Women's Studies at Jadavpur University, in which capacity she led the activities of the centre until her retirement in 1997. SWS gained recognition as a valuable platform for engaging with women's issues. It even saw participation from Engineering and Science Faculties which are typically seen as dominated by men. She is also one of the founder members of the feminist organization Sachetana in Kolkata.

Her focus areas of research include women's studies, women's writings, 19th century English and Bengali literature, the reception of Positivism in Bengal, motherhood and the Partition of India.

She initiated and spearheaded the pioneering Bengali Women Writers Reprint Series edited by the School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, which continues to bring out new editions of writers such as Jyotirmoyee Devi.

She was also Chairperson of the West Bengal Commission for Women from October 2001 until April 2008. [3] Bagchi lent her support to the Hok Kolorob movement 2014 Jadavpur University protests (“let there be polyphony” in Bengali) which sought a fair and immediate investigation into the molestation of a female student in the Jadavpur University campus.

She was part of the five-member team of emeritus professors that met West Bengal Governor and University Chancellor Keshari Nath Tripathi and demanded that a more "able" Vice-Chancellor be appointed.

In 2014, the organisers of the Kolkata Book Fair called off the release of her book on migrating women and human rights, owing to her leftist political affiliation.[4]

Even post her retirement, she attended several conferences in India and remained in close contact with the English Department at Jadavpur University.[2]

Bagchi died on the morning of 9 January 2015, aged 77.[5]

Punarnaba, a voluntary organization that Bagchi was closely associated with, has organized every year since 2015 a Jasodhara Bagchi Memorial Programme, including a lecture in memory of Bagchi.[6] The Jasodhara Bagchi Memorial Hardship Fund was set up in 2019 with the support of the family of Bagchi at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, to help cases of individual hardship among the students of the Department.[7]

• Literature, Society, and Ideology in the Victorian Era (edited volume), (1992)
• Indian Women: Myth and Reality (edited volume), (1995)
• Loved and Unloved: The Girl Child in the Family (with Jaba Guha and Piyali Sengupta)(1997)
• Gem-like Flame: Walter Pater and the 19th Century Paradigm of Modernity (1997)
• Thinking Social Science in India: Essays in Honour of Alice Thorner (co-edited with Krishna Raj and Sujata Patel)(2002)
• The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India, 2 volumes (co-edited with Subhoranjan Dasgupta) (vol. 1 in 2003, vol. 2 in 2009)
• The Changing Status of Women in West Bengal 1970–2000: The Challenges Ahead (edited volume), (2005)
• Interrogating Motherhood (2016)

• Freedom in an Idiom of Loss
• "Partition Through A Woman's Eye", article about Bagchi's academic work on gender and partition in eastern India.
• "Gender Justice", Bagchi on gender perspectives in law reform, ADB Review, 2005
• "The Woman Shaped by Mother", Article on Bagchi's co-edited volume on Indian women's personal narratives
• "The Devi Cult and the Girl Child". Article on the girl child drawing on Bagchi's co-edited volume on the girl child in Bengal