Saikat Maitra was a postdoctoral fellow with the TRG between September 2014 and August at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen. His postdoctoral research ethnographically explores the emergence of new labouring subjectivities amongst underclass youth populations in Kolkata, India through corporate training institutions allied with the city’s upcoming organized retail and service industries. His postdoctoral research was conducted under Professor Ravi Ahuja at Göttingen. At present he is preparing a funding application for a project on “The Transformations of Skill Training in the Industrial Training Institutes”.

Email: saikatmaitra(ghi)yahoo.co.in

Research Interests

My research interest centres around the themes of Urban Anthropology, Post-Industrial Labor, Affect Theories, Gender and Sexuality, Social Justice, Environment and Development, Globalization and Commodity Cultures, Urban Political Ecology, Marxism and Post-Marxism, Cultural Studies, Visual Histories, Modern Indian Literature, Bengali Cinema

Academic Background

2014 Ph.D. Cultural Anthropology (Cultural Forms Program)
Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Dissertation: Laboring to Create Magic: The New Worker in the Emerging Retail Industries of Kolkata
Dissertation Committee Chair: Dr. Kaushik Ghosh
Members: Prof. Kathleen Stewart, Dr. Kamran Ali, Prof. Hannah Wojciehowski, Dr. Sofian Merabet

2006 Research Training Programme (RTP)
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), India
Thesis: The Dismantled Museum: A Critical Reading of Bouvard and Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert
Supervisor: Prof. Sibaji Bandyopadhyay

2004 M. A. Comparative Literature
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Thesis: Narrating Famines: An Insight into Modernity and Nationalist Myths
Supervisor: Prof. Diana Brydon

2002 M. A. Comparative Literature
Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India (Rank - First Class First)
Thesis: The Hyphenated Conundrum: Facets of the Jewish-Canadian Identity in Two Novels of Mordecai Richler
Supervisor: Dr. Suchorita Chattopadhyay

2000 B.A. Comparative Literature
Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India, (Rank -First Class Third)
Major (Honors) in Comparative Literature. Minors in Mathematics, Bengali and English

Publications

Edited Book Chapters
Maitra, Saikat “The Art of Governing: From Naxalbari to Rajarhat” in Naxalbari and Post-Structuralism Ed. Pradip Basu. Routledge, Kolkata, India, 2014 (forthcoming).

Maitra, Saikat, with Srabani Mitra, 'Tapping into the "Standing-Reserve": A Comparative Analysis of Workers’ Training Programs in Kolkata and Toronto', in Studies in Continuing Education 2015, DOI: 10.1080/0158037X.2015.1043988

Maitra, Saikat (Forthcoming). “The Labor of Self-Making: Youth Service Workers and Post-Socialist Urban Development in Kolkata” in Media and Utopia Ed. Anupama Rao & Arvind Rajagopal. Routledge, India, 2014.

Maitra, Saikat (Forthcoming). “The Art of Governing: From Naxalbari to Rajarhat” in Naxalbari and Post-Structuralism Ed. Pradip Basu. Routledge, Kolkata, India, 2014.

Recent Awards, Scholarships and Grants

Dissertation Writing Fellowships
Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Named University of Texas at Austin Dissertation Writing Fellowship ($ 20,000 for two semesters)

Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Continuing Fellowship, University of Texas at Austin ($18,000 for two semesters)

Fall 2011, Graduate Dean’s Prestigious Fellowship Supplement, University of Texas At Austin ($1,000)

Fall 2012, Rhonda L. Andrews Memorial Award, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin ($2,000)

Fall 2010, Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, The Wenner-Gren Foundation ($19,960)

Current Research

Transforming Work: Training Programs and Retail Worker-Identity in Contemporary Kolkata