Sukanya Chakrabarti, Ph.D.

Office: HGH 212
(408) 924-4411
sukanya.chakrabarti@sjsu.edu

Born and raised in Kolkata, Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti, an artist-scholar-teacher, received her doctoral degree in Theater and Performance Studies from Stanford University. She is an Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at the Department of Film and Theatre, at San Jose State University.

Dr. Chakrabarti is the author of In-Between Worlds: Performing [as] Bauls in an Age of Extremism, which examines the performance of Bauls, ‘folk’ performers from Bengal, in the context of a rapidly globalizing Indian economy against the backdrop of extreme nationalistic discourses. Her works have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Indian Theatre Journal; Asian Theatre Journal; Modern Drama; Urban Geography; Ecumenica: Performance and Religion; and Emergency Index. She published a chapter in Troubling Traditions: Canonicity, Theatre, and Performance in the U.S. published by Routledge. She currently serves as a Member of the Executive Committee at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and as the Co-editor of the journal Theatre Topics, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Both as a scholar and an artist, she is interested in spaces and their contribution to meaning- making, placemaking and storytelling. Her current and ongoing research project is on performances of the South Asian diaspora across generations of immigration in California. As an artist, she has worked as a playwright, director, dramaturg, and performer in New York, the Bay Area, and Kolkata. Most recently, she served as the Cultural Dramaturg for Public Obscenities (Pulitzer Prize finalist) written and directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, produced by Soho Rep and NAATCO, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. More details about her projects can be found on her website: www.sukanyac.com.