Dr Francesca Orsini
BA (Venice), PhD (London)
Overview
- Name:
- Dr Francesca Orsini
- Email address:
- fo@soas.ac.uk
- Telephone:
- 020 7898 4242
- Address:
- SOAS, University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG - Building:
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Office No:
- 419
- Office Hours:
- Thursday 10:00 - 12:00
Biography
Francesca Orsini is Reader in the Literatures of North India. She took her undergraduate degree in Hindi at the University of Venice, followed by a long spell in Delhi. Her PhD research at SOAS was on the Hindi public sphere of the 1920s and '30s. She taught at the University of Cambridge for 11 years and joined SOAS in 2006. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Hindi literature.Dr Orsini's main area of research is modern Hindi literature, where she has published on Hindi literary life during the nationalist period; commercial genres such as detective fiction and "social romances"; women writers and women's journals; nineteenth-century commercial publishing in Hindi and Urdu. She has organized several workshops and conferences, including one on Love in South Asia.
Her most recent book, Print and Pleasure: the genres of commercial publishing in nineteenth-century north India, has been published by Permanent Black, and her edited collection Hindi and Urdu Before the Divide has been published by Orient Blackswan.
In October 2006 she started a new research project on "North Indian Literary Culture and History, 1450-1650", funded by the AHRC, which finished in 2009. The project sought to rewrite the history of north Indian literature from a multi-lingual perspective, and included a series of seminars, workshops, and 3 annual conferences. The findings of the project will appear in a series of edited collections.
Teaching
Programmes Convened
Courses Taught
- Directed Readings in a South Asian Literature or Culture (Hindi)
- Directed Readings in the Literature of a Modern South Asian Language
- Hindi Language 4
- Hindi Language 4 (Postgraduate)
- Literature & Colonialism in North India
- Narratives of Mobility in Contemporary Hindi Literature
PhD Students supervised
- Chinmay Sharma, The Mahabharata re-constructed for Hindi and English publics: modernity and the 'national epic'
- Patricia Sauthoff, Open Secrets and the Retention of Power in Kashmir Saivism
- Priyanka Basu, ‘Cockfight in Tune: Reading Nations, Communities and Performance in the “Bengali” Kobigaan’
- Rasha Chatta, The Itinerary as a Mode of Existing: Narratives of Wanderers in Contemporary Migrant Literature
- Rashi Rohatgi, Fighting Cane and Canon: Reading Abhimanyu Unnuth's Hindi Poetry in and outside of Literary Mauritius
Expertise
For help in contacting SOAS academics and advice on services to business and the community, please contact SOAS Enterprise on +44(0)20 7898 4837 or email enterprise@soas.ac.uk.
For all press and media enquiries please call +44 (0)20 7898 4956/4135 or email comms@soas.ac.uk
Available for
Regional Expertise
- South Asia
Country Expertise
Languages
Publications
Authored Books
Orsini, Francesca (2009) Print and Pleasure: Popular literature and entertaining fictions in colonial north India. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Orsini, Francesca (2002) The Hindi Public Sphere 1920-1940. Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism. Oxford University Press.
Edited Books
Orsini, Francesca, ed. (2010) Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu literary culture. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
Orsini, Francesca, ed. (2006) Love in South Asia: a cultural history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (University of Cambridge Oriental Publications)
Book Chapters
Orsini, Francesca (2010) '“Krishna is the Truth of Man” Mir ‘Abdul Wahid Bilgrami's Haqā’iq-i Hindī (Indian Truths) and the circulation of dhrupad and bishnupad.' In: Busch, Allison and de Bruijn, Thomas, (eds.), Culture and Circulation. Leiden: Brill. (Forthcoming)
Orsini, Francesca (2006) 'Love Letters.' In: Orsini, F., (ed.), Love in South Asia. A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press, pp. 228-258.
Orsini, Francesca (2004) 'Detective Novels. A Commercial Genre in Nineteenth-Century North India.' In: Blackburn, S. and Dalmia, V., (eds.), India's Literary History. Essays on the Nineteenth Century. Permanent Black, pp. 435-482.
Orsini, Francesca (2004) 'The Reticent Autobiographer. Mahadevi Varma's Writings.' In: Arnold, D. and Blackburn, S., (eds.), Telling Lives in India. Biography, Autobiography, and Life History. Permanent Black, pp. 54-82.
Orsini, Francesca (2004) 'Introduction.' In: Rai, Alok, (ed.), Oxford India Premchand. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-14.
Orsini, Francesca (2004) 'Pandits, Printers and Others: Publishing in nineteenth-century Benares.' In: Gupta, Abhijit and Chakravorty, Swapan, (eds.), Print Areas: Book history in India. New Delhi: Permanent Black, pp. 103-138.
Articles
Orsini, Francesca (2012) 'How to do multilingual literary history? Lessons from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century north India.' Indian Economic and Social History Review, 49 (2). pp. 225-246.
Orsini, Francesca (2006) 'Cannons and Rubber boats: Oriana Fallaci and the 'Clash of Civilizations'.' Interventions International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 8 (3). pp. 444-460.
Orsini, Francesca (2005) 'A Review Symposium.' Indian Economic and Social History Review, 42 .
Orsini, Francesca (2002) 'India in the Mirror of World Fiction.' New Left Review (13). pp. 75-88.
