COMPARATIVE LITERARY STUDIES PROGRAM

Dibyajyoti (Eamon) Lahiri holds a BA in English and an MA in Literary and Cultural Studies. His academic interests are in narratology, illness narratives, Dalit studies, media studies, and the ecological humanities. He intends to study configurations of time and space in South Asian stories of epidemic, focusing on how they facilitate the articulation and resolution of the outbreak as a cosmological disorder, especially in the absence of a biomedical resolution. He is also interested in exploring a long-standing tradition in Indian eco-horror cinema wherein environmental messaging is necessarily mediated (often to the point of obscurement) by the heavy involvement of supernatural themes. This stands in stark contrast not just to Western eco-horror, but also to popular Asian genres such as kaiju. In a 2021 paper published in the journal Science Fiction Film and Television, he has attempted a preliminary investigation into this phenomenon, going on to discuss the socio-cultural factors leading to the recent emergence of media texts that depart from this trend. Outside of academia, he is a herpetology enthusiast and takes a keen interest in evolutionary biology. He likes to play and study chess in his spare time, as well as enjoying slow-burn horror movies.