Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

English

Committee Chair

Gwen Bergner

Committee Co-Chair

Rose Casey

Committee Member

Rose Casey

Committee Member

Erin Brock Carlson

Committee Member

Lynne Stahl

Abstract

I explore Bangladeshi literature’s specificity and contributions in the context South Asia. This project expands the existing oeuvre of South Asian literary and postcolonial studies by bringing Bangladeshi literature into current debates on nation, nationality, and identity. I investigate the role of literary texts in developing a national ethos by doing analysis of twentieth to twenty-first-century Bangladeshi novels – in English and Bangla – to argue the necessity of developing a temporal understanding of South Asia rather than a spatial one. The dissertation demonstrates how Bangladeshi novels have contributed to and subverted the idea of “imagined community” following Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. For this endeavor, the project considers the Great Partition to critically examine the shifting power dynamics in the subcontinent. I build on this investigation to examine the role of literary prizes and publishing houses in forming a South Asian anglophone canon that has influenced the existing digital record of scholarship in South Asia. By drawing on relevant scholarship on digital humanities and postcolonial studies, my dissertation shows the hegemony of the English language in the digital domain to point towards two pervasive criticisms of digital humanities – the dearth of cultural criticism and lack of linguistic diversity. To rectify the bias in existing digital records and to ensure greater representation of literatures, from underrepresented regions and languages, my dissertation makes a case for multilingual digital archives using Bangladeshi literature as a case study.

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