A photo of a water body with ducks swimming and with vegetation nearby

Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences

Photo of Pooja   Sancheti

Pooja Sancheti

Assistant Professor

Humanities and Social Sciences

Postcolonial literature, South Asian literature, postmodernist fiction, literary theory, magical realism

pooja@iiserpune.ac.in

Pooja Sancheti has been working at IISER Pune since 2014 (2014-2020: Visiting Faculty; 2020-present: Assistant Professor) in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department. Pooja obtained her PhD in English Literature from EFLU (English and Foreign Languages University; formerly CIEFL) Hyderabad. She was a Fulbright FLTA at Stanford University from 2010-2011. At IISER Pune, she teaches courses in (English) Literature and Theory and English Language. She is involved in some interdisciplinary projects that tie the humanities with the natural sciences.  

Research

Literary Studies

Pooja’s research interests in literary studies include postmodernism, magical realism, and South Asian Anglophone Literature. She is keenly interested in understanding the transition from postcolonial to transnational in contemporary South Asian Anglophone fiction, in women’s writing from this region, and in attendant issues of borders, identities, language, and conflict. Her research relies on both literary texts and critical theory. She is also an Hindi/English literary translator. 

English for Academic Purposes 

Pooja has been teaching English for academic and official purposes for many years and is interested in the evolving theories and practices of English for Academic Purposes. This interest is fed through her Academic Communication Skills course as well as other long and short workshops on EAP she conducts for varied groups. She has presented her findings at ELT and EAP conferences. She is also involved in projects at the intersections of language and science pedagogy. 

Interdisciplinary Studies

Pooja is involved with some projects that tie the humanities with the sciences, chief among which are a course she has co-designed titled 'Disease and Discourse'.  

Publications (Literary Studies)

Forthcoming: Sancheti, Pooja, translator. "The Mahalakshmi Bridge". "Mahalakshmi ka Pul" by Krishan Chander. Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi)

Sancheti, Pooja, translator. "Tasveerein". "The Photographs" by Kunzang Choden. Hans, March 2023, pp. 52-57. 

Sancheti, Pooja. Review of Insurgency: The Art of the Freedom Struggle in India and The Artist, by Vinay Lal. The Beacon, Jan 2023.

Sancheti, Pooja. “Recovering May Price: A Longitudinal Reading of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines”. ariel: a review of international english literature, vol. 54, no. 1, Jan 2023, pp. 103-129. Johns Hopkins University Press and the University of Calgary. Project MUSE, doi: 10.1353/ari.2023.0004.

Sancheti, Pooja, translator. "Paradoxical Man." “Tukda-tukda Aadmi” by Mridula Garg. The Beacon, Nov 2022.

Sancheti, Pooja. “Reading Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest in 2022”. The Beacon, Oct 2022. 

Sancheti, Pooja. “Women, Violence, and Magical Realism in the Fiction of Mohammed Hanif.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, vol. 49, no. 1-2, March-June 2022, p. 136-154. Project Muse: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/260/article/881617

Sancheti, Pooja. “Locating Ben Okri’s The Age of Magic in a Cosmopolitan Framework”. Hypercultura, vol. 8, 2019. 

Sancheti, Pooja. “Written and Over-written: Investigating Metafictional Strategies in Janet Frame’s The Carpathians”. Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (LLIDS), vol. 3, issue 1, Oct 2019, pp. 90-109. 

Sancheti, Pooja, translator. (selected poems from) Kal Sunana Mujhe by Sudama Pandey 'Dhoomil'. Indian Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, vol. 4, no.1, Oct 2018. 

Sancheti, Pooja. “Postmodernist Poetics in Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry”. Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (LLIDS), vol. 1, issue 4, June 2018, pp 1-18. 

Sancheti, Pooja. “The City and its Paradoxes in Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale”. Gnosis, vol. 3, no. 2, Jan 2017, pp. 113-121. (UGC approved journal, No. 48815). 

Select Publications (Pedagogy)

Forthcoming: Sancheti, Pooja. “Language and Science: Some Problems and Solutions” in Roadmap for Humanities & Social Sciences and STEM Higher Education,ed. Sayantan Mandal. (Springer)

Sancheti, Pooja (2019). Five teaching-learning modules on literature, language skills, and climate change for TROP-ICSU (Trans-disciplinary Research Oriented Pedagogy for Improving Climate Studies and Understanding). These modules are available online at: https://tropicsu.org/?s=pooja+sancheti. 

Sancheti, Pooja (2017). Three learning and testing modules on Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome for the “Indian Writing in English” course, commissioned by MHRD’s NME-ICT (The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology) Swayam online portal. The modules are available online at: <https://swayam.gov.in/courses/5748-indian-writing-in-english>