Chinmoy Guha

Chinmoy Guha
Born 10 September 1958
Kolkata, India
Occupation

Professor of english at the university of calcutta, bengali essayist and translator and a french-language scholar.

Former Vice-Chancellor, Rabindra Bharati University; former editor, Book Reviews, Desh ; former director of publications, Embassy of France in India.
Nationality Indian
Spouse Anasuya Guha (Professor of English at Bethune College)
Children Surangama Guha

Chinmoy Guha (born in September 1958 in Kolkata, India) is a Professor and former Head of Department of English at the University of Calcutta,[1] a Bengali essayist and translator, and a French-language scholar. He has been the vice-chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University and Director of Publications, Embassy of France, New Delhi.[2] Earlier he taught English at Vijaygarh Jyotish Ray College in Kolkata for more than two decades, and French at the Alliance Française and the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture for eleven and five years respectively.[3][4]

Guha has edited Boier Desh and the Book Reviews of Desh, a literary journal of Bengal from 2003 to 2012, where he wrote the column Boier Janala for ten years. At present, he writes a regular column called Ghumer Darja Thhele in Robbar, Sangbad Pratidin.[5]

He has won the Lila Ray award of the Government of West Bengal in 2008 and the Derozio bicentenary award in 2010. He has been awarded knighthoods by the ministries of Education and Culture of the Government of France, in 2010 and 2013.

Life and education

Guha was educated at Jagadbandhu Institution, in south Kolkata, before studying English literature at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta and completing his M. A. in English at the University of Calcutta in 1980. He completed his PhD on the Impact of French poets and thinkers on T. S. Eliot (1996) from Jadavpur University where he was a Teacher Fellow for one year.[6]

He has researched in France, Britain and Switzerland. He has lectured on Romain Rolland and India at the India Festival in Boulogne-Billancourt (2002), at University of Avignon (2004), Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon (2005), Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (2009), Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (2009) and the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauritius (2012). He has been a visiting professor at the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris (2009).[7]

Chinmoy Guha with Jacques Derrida

His translation of Molière's George Dandin, staged by Alliance Française de Chittagong, Bangladesh won an award in 2009.[8]

The critical success of his work on T.S. Eliot, Where the Dreams Cross: T. S. Eliot and French Poetry (2000), resulted in him delivering lectures on Eliot’s extensive debt to Symbolist and Post-Symbolist French Poetry at St John’s College, Oxford, Manchester University, Warwick University and University of Worcester.[9] Frank Kermode said "He has gone deeper into the French origins or sources of T S Eliot than any other commentator I have encountered" in The Sunday Times, London, 4 June 2001 and also wrote appreciatively in the Times Higher Education.[10]

Guha's admiration for French was triggered off by a class lecture by professor Purushottama Lal, when Guha was an undergraduate student at the St. Xavier's College. Later in life, the poet and French scholar Arun Mitra became his main source of inspiration for learning French. He has translated various works from French into Bengali. His books of essays Chilekothar Unmadini (2007) and Garho Sankher Khonje (2010) established him as a distinguished writer of Bengali prose.[11]

Awards

Documentaries

He has been the narrator of several documentaries produced by the Bhasha Mandakini project of the Central Institute of Indian Languages. The documentaries pertained to subjects such as Rabindranath Tagore, Arun Mitra and Buddhadeb Bosu.

Festschrift

The literary magazine Amritalok published a festschrift on Chinmoy Guha in April 2012.[15]

Works

Books

Chinmoy Guha with Le Clézio, the 2008 Nobel laureate in literature

Articles in books

Chinmoy Guha with Romain Rolland's biographer Bernard Duchatelet

References

  1. "Teachers-Profile-chinmoy". Caluniv.ac.in. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  2. "French honour for Professor Chinmoy Guha – Times of India". Timesofindia.indiatimes.com. 18 October 2013. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  3. "PASSERELLE : Chinmoy Guha, les littératures au cœur". Le Mauricien. 5 April 2013. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  4. "CONFERENCE DU PROFESSEUR CHINMOY GUHA | CitĂŠ internationale universitaire de Paris". 193.52.24.107. 24 November 2009. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  5. "Sangbad Pratidin Robbar: Ghumer Darja Thele". Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  6. "Teachers' Profile of Professor Chinmoy Guha". Retrieved 7 February 2014.
  7. "Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme: Chercheurs invités DEA". Msh-paris.fr. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  8. "Int'l French Theatre Festival ends on a positive note". thedailystar.net. 22 April 2009. Retrieved 7 February 2014.
  9. "Teachers' Profile of Professor Chinmoy Guha in the official website of Calcutta University". Retrieved 7 February 2014.
  10. "Epiphany that unlocked a genius | English". Times Higher Education. 11 May 2001. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  11. "PUBLISHED BOOKS" (PDF). http://chercheurs.msh-paris.fr. Retrieved 7 February 2014. External link in |publisher= (help)
  12. "Details". Epaper.telegraphindia.com. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  13. "French honour for CU professor – Times of India". Articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com. 4 April 2010. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  14. "Dr. Chinmoy Guha's speech on Leela Roy's birth centenary Part-5". YouTube. 12 August 2010. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  15. Amr̥taloka 37 (1 & 2). March 2012. ISSN 0971-4308. Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, March 08, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.