Admissions Open 2024

Dr. Indrani Bhattacharjee

Dr. Indrani Bhattacharjee

Associate Professor

B.A. (Mumbai University);

M.A. (Pune University);

Ph.D. (Jadavpur University);

Ph.D. (University of Massachusetts)

: ibhattacharjee@jgu.edu.in

Dr. Indrani Bhattacharjee has doctoral degrees in philosophy from Jadavpur University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has taught for over eight years at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and for shorter stints at Bridgewater State University and Tufts University in the United States. While her thinking and teaching are strongly influenced by her training in Analytic philosophy, Indrani is also interested in exploring veins of philosophical enquiry that actively combine dialectical thought with the deliverances of a synoptic and/or poetic vision and imagination.

Her dominant research interest at this time is the early philosophical thought of Rabindranath Tagore (circa 1908-1916). Her areas of expertise and teaching competence include the philosophy of the Later Wittgenstein, philosophy of education, epistemology and aesthetics.

Indrani has taught Philosophy for over two decades at various institutions in India and abroad. Her two PhD dissertations (at Jadavpur University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, respectively) dealt in different ways with Anglo-American philosophy of language and 20th C. history of epistemology. She is currently working on the manuscript of a monograph on Tagore’s thought circa 1908-1930.

Book chapters
  • “Some Remarks on Gandhi’s and Tagore’s Views of Love,” in Rajesh Kharat, Kanchana Mahadevan, Satishchandra Kumar and Meher Bhoot (Eds.), Gandhi Then and Now: Autobiographies and Coversations, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2022.
  • “Rabindranath Tagore on the Meaning of Work and the Question of the Teacher’s Vocation,” in Darryl De Marzio (Ed.), David Hansen and the Call to Teach: Retrospective Essays, New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 2020.
Journal Article
  • “Competence and Language Acquisition: Determining the Conceptual Limits of Chomskyan Nativism,” Indian Philosophical Quarterly, 28: 4, 2001, 441-454.
  • Essays in the Press: “A Plea for Citizenship Education in the Post-Truth World,” The Wire, January 26, 2021.
  • “Rabindranath Tagore on The Import of Our Encounter with Art,” The New Leam, June 24, 2020.
  • “The Sufferings of Others: What the Current Crisis Tells Us about Capacity for Empathy,” The Wire, May 25, 2020.
  • “Tagore on the Human Being as an Artist: Some Implications for Education,” The New Leam, Volume 5, No. 42, April 2019, pp. 6-9.
  • “Exploring Tagore’s Love, Longing and Humanity,” The New Leam, Volume 4, No. 40, December 2018, pp. 18-24.

 

Tagore as philosopher, Vedanta metaphysics and ethics, contemporary Anglophone Indian philosophy, philosophy of religion.

 

  • Reason, Passion and Reality: Themes in Early Modern Thought, Fall 2024.
  • Moral Philosophy, Spring 2024.
  • Philosophy of Language: Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle and Grice, Spring 2023.
  • Introduction to the Thought of Rabindranath Tagore, Spring 2023, Spring 2024.
  • Introduction to Ethics, Spring 2022.
  • Introduction to Philosophy (Core course; 2 sections), Fall 2021; Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024 (1 section).  Thesis – II Seminar, Spring 2022.