Nabaneeta Dev Sen - Professional Background

Professional Background

Nabaneeta Dev Sen has been a writer in residence at several international Artists' Colonies, including Yaddo and MacDowell Colony in the United States; Bellaggio in Italy; and the Mishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem. She has been a visiting professor and a visiting creative writer at several universities in the United States, including Harvard, Cornell, Rutgers, Columbia, Smith College, and Chicago. In Canada, she has been visiting professor at Toronto, York, and British Columbia. Other countries where she has participated as professor include Mexico, England, Germany, France, and Japan. Nabaneeta Dev Sen has delivered the Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecture series (1996–1997) at Oxford University on epic poetry.

She has held the Maytag Chair of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Colorado College 1988–1989. She has represented herself and India in many international conferences, both academic and literary. These conferences have been presented at the Festival of India USA 1986; the Frankfurt Book Fair 1993; and the Munich Book Week 2002.

She has held important executive positions in International academic bodies like the International Comparative Literature Association (1973–1979), and The International Association of Semiotic and Structural Studies (1989–1994). She has been the Vice President of Indian National Comparative Literature Association; chief editor of Bengali in the Macmillan's Modern Indian Novel Series. She has also served as Member of the Jury of important literary awards including the Jnanpith award, Saraswati Samman, Kabir Samman, and Rabindra Puraskar. Nabaneeta Dev Sen is the Vice President of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishat. She is the founder and president of West Bengal Women Writers' Association.

In 2002, Nabaneeta Dev Sen retired as Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. She has been working with the treatment of women in world epics and the treatment of epic poetry by rural women in India. Nabaneeta Dev Sen was nominated as the JP Naik Distinguished Fellow at the Centre of Women's Development Studies, New Delhi, 2003–2005, where she is translating Chandrabati's 16th century Bengali Ramayana text into English with a critical introduction and annotations.