About
I am a comics-maker/researcher/writer and a South Asian immigrant based in New York, originally from Calcutta, India. As a PhD Candidate at Stony Brook University, I am currently drawing my doctoral dissertation as a comic. In both my creative and academic work, I focus on how comics can be utilized by scholars and artists alike in ethnography, in narrative medicine, in literary activism, in resisting dominant discourses.
Find out more about my work at
https://www.kaysohini.com/graphic-dissertationEducation
PhD in English, Stony Brook University
(Started Fall 2017–)
Dissertation:
Drawing Unbelonging: Comics as Thinking, as Method, as Resistance
BA and MA in English (2011-2016)
Jadavpur University Work Shared in CORE
Essays
Visual art
Other Publications
Peer Reviewed Publications:
“Pandemic Precarities” ; COVID-19 Anthology, Graphic Mundi Imprint/Penn State University Press. Expected early 2021.
“Drawing Intersectionality: Comics, Neurodiversity and New Subjectivities”; in MLA (Modern Language Association) Volume Neurofutures. Forthcoming, 2021.
“The Queerness of Being” ; Chapter in Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives, De Gruyter. Forthcoming, 2021.
“Comics in the Age of Digitization” ; Sequentials, vol. 1, no. 4, 2020.
“The Graphic Memoir as a Transitional Object” ; Assay: A Journal of Non-fiction Studies, March 2019.
“On the Threshold of Being and Belonging”; Chapter in an Edited Collection Comics and Catharsis: Exploring Narratives of Trauma and Memory in the Graphic Novel. Forthcoming.
Other Writing:
“I draw (A Graphic Dissertation), therefore I am”, Women Write About Comics, September 2020.
Review of Erin William’s Commute, Extra Inks. June 2020.
“Mental Health, Comics, the Grad Student” in Gradhacker, Inside Higher Ed, March 2020.
”International Student Precarity in the Humanities Academy” in Gradhacker, Inside Higher Ed, April 2020.
Section on “Graduate Studies in the Time of Coronavirus”, MLA Grads. April 2020.
“A Medley of Multi-modal Projects”, Insider Higher Ed, June 2020.Upcoming Talks and Conferences
Conferences:
• “Reinventing Form: A Recent History of Interactive Comics, Audio Comics and Comics in Augmented Reality” in the Roundtable New Flashpoints in Comics History organized by Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives, MLA 2021, Toronto [Upcoming]
• “Twice Othered: Ecological Imperialism and Settler Colonialism in The Rabbits” in the panel The Other in Narratives of Rival Nations organized by the Children’s Literature Association, MLA 2021, Toronto [Upcoming]
• “Subverting dominant Discourses through Interactive Graphic Narratives” Modern Language Association (MLA); January 2020, Seattle.
• “Institutional Contexts and the Shaping and Re-Shaping of Power”, Modern Language Association (MLA); January 2020, Seattle.
• “Comics, Multiple Marginalities and the Queerness of Being” in the panel Comics and Shaping of Identities: Queer Spaces and Gendered Places; March 2020, NeMLA Boston
• “Creating an Online Presence via HCommons Blog”, A Humanities Commons Twitter Conference, July 2019.
• “You Are Not Your Illness: Narrativizing Identity in Disability and Illness Memoirs”, Modern Language Association (MLA); January 2019, Chicago.
• “Across Borders and In-Between Spaces” at the South Asian Literary Association (SALA);
January 2019, Chicago, 2019.
• “Kamala Khan as Miss Marvel: On Being a Brown, Muslim, Immigrant Superhero”; 50th Anniversary Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA); Washington DC 2019.
• “Artistic Resistance and Drawing Girlhood” Creative Panel on Writing Girlhood at NeMLA; March 2019.
• “Objects, Emotions, and Neocolonialism in Graphic Narratives.” Literature as Activism, 30th Annual Graduate Conference, Stony Brook University, New York, January 2018.
• “Seeing is Saying: Postcolonial Identity Crisis and Resistance in Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir.” Doing Graphic Stories National Conference, Jadavpur University, India, January 12-14, 2017
Panels, Roundtables and Conferences Organized:
• Organizing Committee Member of Gradcon 2020, Stony Brook University.
• Organizer of the Roundtable Session “Comics and Illness”, MLA 2021, Toronto [Upcoming]
• Organizer of the Roundtable Session “Graphic Narratives and Multiple Marginalities” at Modern Language Association (MLA) 2020, Seattle.
• Organizer of the Creative Panel “Who Belongs, Who Does Not: The Use of Comics as Literatures of Resistance”, at Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) 2020, Boston. Memberships
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
South Asian Literary Association (SALA)
