Swapan Kumar Chakravorty

Swapan Kumar Chakravorty (Bengali: স্বপন কুমার চক্রবর্তী) (born 29 July 1954) is Professor, Department of English, Jadavpur University. He has also served as Director General of the National Library of India, Kolkata.

An alumnus of Calcutta Boys' School, Presidency College, Kolkata and Jadavpur University, he obtained his D. Phil. from Oxford University. He joined the Department in 1985 and was Head from 2005 to 2007. He has also been the Deputy Co-ordinator of the Centre for Advanced Study programme, and part of the Departmental research projects under the ASIHSS programme. He was also Joint Director, School of Cultural Texts and Records.

He teaches Renaissance European literature, early modern drama, Shakespeare, Latin classics, textual criticism, history of the book and literary theory. His other interests include Augustan literature, 19th century Bengali culture, Modernity and Film Studies. He is internationally acknowledged as an authority on Renaissance drama (especially Thomas Middleton) and the history of the book.

Professor Chakravorty has also taught at the Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, the University of Calcutta and Universiti Malaya, and delivered the Strode Renaissance Lectures at the University of Alabama in 2003. He has been delegate at the Tenth SAARC Writers’ Conference and the Edinburgh Book Festival. He has also spoken at the World Congress of the International Shakespeare Association at Velencia, at 'The Future of Archives' workshop at King's College, London, and has delivered the Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay Memorial Lecture, Sunitikumar Chattopadhyay Memorial Lecture and Jitendranath Chakrabarti Memorial Lecture at Bangla Akademi, Kolkata, Sukhalata Rao Memorial Lecture and Ranajay Karlekar Lecture at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, the Foundation Day Orations at Bangiya Sahitya Parishat and the Centre for Archaeoplogical Research and Training, Eastern India, Kolkata, and the first Kabindranath Phukan Memorial lecture at Guahati University, Guwahati.

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