Neeraja Sundaram

Areas of Interest & Expertise

  • Narrative Theory
  • Health Humanities
  • English Romantic Literature
  • Popular Culture
  • Pedagogy and Literature

Biography

I received my MPhil and PhD in English Studies from the University of Hyderabad. My doctoral research lies at the intersection of Literature and the Health Humanities and as such, focuses on questions of narrative and identity in the context of illness experience. 

As part of exploring connections between the story of a disease event in individuals and societies and a cultural transaction in meaning that occurs via its reception, I have worked on a range of media texts and forms but those of special interest remain the memoir, medical documentary and comics and graphic narrative.

I am particularly interested in new kinds of voices and identities that emerge when we pay attention to healthcare as a site of storytelling. Before joining the University, I taught literature at Christ University, Bengaluru. 

I have published essays on the representation of the ailing celebrity body in contemporary media, questions of agency in fictional representations of the grotesque body, the epidemiological fiction of Octavia Butler, the emerging canon of physician-writers and epidemics in contemporary Hollywood. 

My recent work has focused on the medium of graphic novels and the perspective of caregivers with close attention to rights, precarity and gender as it emerges through narrative. 

I am interested in developing sites of engagement for students and teachers in India in English Literature and in emerging fields like the Health Humanities which have a stronger presence in American and European contexts. Towards this, I have completed a manuscript for Orient BlackSwan’s Literary Contexts series which aims to provide accessible introductions to teaching and learning key periods in English writing. 

I have also participated in and conducted workshops on methods of teaching and studying cultural representations of illness and its medical management with a specific focus on the role of literary-cultural studies. 

Courses

Books

Publications

Journal Articles

Book Reviews

Podcast

Book Project

  • Completed a manuscript titled English Romantic Literature, part of Orient BlackSwan’s Literary Contexts series that provides an accessible survey of socio-cultural contexts for writing produced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in England.