Himani Bannerji


Himani Bannerji is a Canadian writer, sociologist, scholar, and philosopher from Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

Early life and education

Bannerji was born in Bengal Presidency of British India. She studied in Calcutta. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English from Visva-Bharati University and Jadavpur University respectively, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Her thesis was completed in 1988 with the title: The Politics of Representation: A Study of Class and Class Struggle in the Political Theatre of West Bengal.

Career

She teaches in the Department of Sociology, the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought, and the Graduate Programme in Women's Studies at York University in Canada. She is also known for her activist work and poetry.
Bannerji works in the areas of Marxist, feminist and anti-racist theory. She is especially focused on reading colonial discourse through Karl Marx's concept of ideology, and putting together a reflexive analysis of gender, race and class.
Bannerji also does much lecturing about the Gaze and othering and silencing of women who are marginalized.
Her novella, Coloured Pictures, teaches children about confronting racism.
In addition to her work in the academy, Bannerji has also published in a variety of venues to reach different audiences. Two of her articles have been published in Rungh Magazine.

Fiction

Coloured Pictures Her Mother's Ashes, in: Nurjehan Aziz, ed. Her Mother's Ashes. Stories by South Asian Women in Canada and the United States. TSAR Publications, Toronto 1994

Poetry

  • Doing Time: Poems
  • A Separate Sky – Which includes her translation of Bengali poems by Subhas Mukhapadhyay, Manbendra Bandyopadhyay and Shamshur Rahman.

Co-authored and edited

  • Of Property and Propriety: The Role of Gender and Class in Imperialism and Nationalism ;
  • Unsettling Relations: The University as a Site for Feminist Struggle ;
  • ''Returning the Gaze: : Essays on Gender, Race and Class by Non-White Women''