Amrita Dhar

Project Director and Principal Investigator

Amrita Dhar is a literary and cultural historian, and Assistant Professor of English at The Ohio State University, where she researches and teaches courses in early modern studies, disability studies, postcolonial studies, and migration studies. She has written on a range of topics, including John Milton’s blind poetics, premodern critical race studies and Shakespeare, social histories of mountaineering, and social justice pedagogy, for both academic and popular venues. Her research has been supported by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Huntington Library, and The Ohio State University’s College of Arts and Sciences. She is co-editing with Amrita Sen the collection Shakespeare in the “Post”Colonies: Legacies, Cultures and Social Justice (under contract with Bloomsbury); and a journal special issue of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation on the topic of “Shakespeare in Bengal.” She is also an active climber and mountaineer and writes on world mountaineering literatures.

dhar.24@osu.edu

 

Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́

Co-Principal Investigator

Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́ is Humanities Distinguished Professor in the English Department at The Ohio State University. Kọ́lẹ́ẹ̀jì Onígbá Méjì, his Yoruba language translation of Femi Osofisan’s Kolera Kolej, was published in 2022. His Arts of Being Yorùbá: Divination, Allegory, Tragedy, Proverb, Panegyric (2017; 2019) won the Best Book of the Year: Scholarship award of the African Literature Association. In spring 2020, he guest edited an issue of Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry on Postcolonial “Black Panther.” Adéẹ̀kọ́’s research ambition at the present time is to complete the book on speech acts in poetry.

adeeko.1@osu.edu

 

Amrita Sen

Collaborator

Dr. Amrita Sen is Associate Professor and Deputy Director, UGC-HRDC, University of Calcutta. She is currently the Director of Women’s Studies Research Centre, and Affiliated Faculty Department of English, University of Calcutta. She has edited Digital Shakespeares from the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan 2022) and is co-editor of Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge UK 2020), and a special issue of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies on “Alternative Histories of the East India Company” (2017). She has published essays and book chapters on East India Company women, Bollywood Shakespeares, and early modern ethnography.

amrita_sen@yahoo.com

Kayley DeLong

Graduate Research Associate

Kayley DeLong is a current PhD Candidate in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. Her broad research interests are in critical disability studies, carceral studies, and history. Her current project investigates the conversion of former carceral institutions, specifically psychiatric hospitals, into heritage tourist sites. At OSU she enjoys being interdisciplinarily engaged across the humanities, including English, History, and Comparative Studies.

delong.278@osu.edu

 

Sushmitha Ravikumar

Creative Production Collaborator for Music

An alumna of The Ohio State University, Sushmitha Ravikumar is a Carnatic vocalist and violinist. She learns vocal from Shri Madurai R. Sundar, disciple of Sangeetha Kalanithi Shri. T.N. Seshagopalan, and violin from Kum. Akkarai Sornalatha of the Akkarai sisters. Through IndianRaga, she has earned over 11 million views in her music productions on YouTube. In addition, she has performed nationally and internationally, most notably at the United Nations and in India, and has accompanied numerous musicians and dance arangetrams. She is trained as a chemical engineer, completed her MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and now works in management consulting.

 

Evan Williams

Creative Production Collaborator for Art

Evan William’s story as an artist began early in his life, around age eight or nine. Throughout his childhood, he bounced from town to town whenever his father moved for his military career: Colorado, Virginia, Kentucky, even Belgium, and ultimately Ohio. “My mother and father did a really good job of encouraging me and giving me the tools I needed to further myself,” he says. “I was always one of those kids who, when given the choice, would stay in the house to draw and paint. I’ve always been a more creative type.” His work today combines elements of traditional and digital art with an eye towards social justice and commentary. His work has been exhibited in numerous public buildings and venues in central Ohio. Today, he works to get better at his art every day and focuses on making people smile.