Sumita Chakravarty

Sumita S. Chakravarty has a Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. in English from Lucknow University, India. She served as associate dean in Media Studies from 2011-2014, and as the founding chair of Culture and Media at Lang College from 2000-2008. She is the author of National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947-1987 (U of Texas Press 1993; Oxford U Press 1996); The Enemy Within (editor, 2000) and several articles in journals and anthologies, including The Routledge Companion to Gender and Cinema (2016) and most recently, “Mapping Migration” in Uncertain Archives (MIT Press, 2020). Her research interests include media theory, media and globalization, film and national identity, digital cultures, and the history and philosophy of media technologies. She is currently working on a book on the intersections of media and migration. She leads the online platform Media+Migration Lab, which cultivates interdisciplinary projects examining the entanglements between immigration and its mediation. This includes its ongoing foundational project, Migration Mapping, a living digital archive for media and migration.

Sumita Chakravarty was the recipient of the Distinguished University Teaching Award at the New School in 2018. She has also established an endowed fellowship in her parents' memory for a rising MA student in digital media studies, The Bishwanath and Sandhya Sinha Memorial Endowed Fellowship.