Category: Guest Lecture

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Screening of Nandita Das’s Manto – December 16, 2025 * 6:00 pm

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Nandita Das’s 2018 film,ย Manto,ย about the life and trials of the modernist Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto,ย on December 16, 2025 from 6:00-8:30 pm at the Institute for Indology and Tibetology atย Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitรคt Mรผnchen, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427).ย  Anyone interested in translation studies, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcome to join the screening.

โ€œBorn in Punjab in 1912, Manto was one of most controversial writers of the age, eloquently crafting empathetic and shocking short stories about those living on the edges of society. Many of his best tales were inspired by his time in what is now Mumbai between 1936 and 1948. He would recall these years as the happiest of his short life, with stories that portrayed a very different side to India, embracing both beauty and uglinessโ€ฆ While best known for his tales of partition such as โ€˜Toba Tek Singh,โ€™ he also masterfully captured the underbelly of [Mumbai], telling stories of pimps, gangsters, salon madams, and prostitutes living in cramped chawls. His stories were frank, forthright and imbued with a sense of moral outrage that aimed to give a voice to the voiceless. Notoriety inevitably followed him, and Manto faced trial six times on charges of obscenity for his short storiesโ€ฆ

“โ€˜Heโ€™s so relevant to today, and it is my way of responding to what is happening now,โ€™ explains [Director Nandita] Das, speaking from Mumbai. โ€˜His empathy was very deep for those that exist on the margins of society โ€“ especially for women and sex workers โ€“ and no one in India was writing about that at the timeโ€™โ€ฆ Das was fascinated by the fact that Manto wrestled with the theme of identity all his life. It was this that inspired her to make the film. He was a Muslim living in a cosmopolitan city also populated by Sikhs, Christians, and Jews. It was a place where textile workers huddled in cramped tenements while film producers puffed on fat cigars in luxurious surroundings. Manto lived and breathed a city of contrast and contradiction, much of which is still reflected in its modern incarnation, Mumbai.โ€ โ€“ Joseph Walsh, The Guardian

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

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“How to Survive as a Writer Under American Capitalism” Reading & Talk by Rita Banerjee – University of North Dakota * October 7, 7pm CT on Zoom

Dr. Rita Banerjee will be reading from her personal essay “American Caste” and presenting a short lecture on “How to Survive as a Writer under American Capitalism” for the University of North Dakota Virtual Speakers Series in Writing, Editing, & Publishing on Tuesday, October 7 at 7 pm CT via Zoom. Audience members can join the Zoom webinar by scanning the QR Code above. And here’s more information about the talk:

How to Survive as a Writer under American Capitalism

In the 21st Century, creative writers in the United States are facing unprecedented challenges to their discipline, craft, and survival. In 2025 alone, writers have witnessed large cuts in government funding for universities and humanities departments, the suspension of the NEA Fellowship for Creative Writers, and a number of class-action lawsuits against Artificial Intelligence companies, such as Bartz vs. Anthropic, in which A.I. companies are accused of illegally downloading 7.5 million literary and scholarly books and 81 million research papers to train their Large Language Model systems.[1] In this era of late capitalism, how can writers find viable ways to maintain and grow in their craft, seek the education in the humanities they desire, and create sustainable careers and communities in creative writing? As a multi-genre writer who is deeply inspired by world literature and transnationalism, Dr. Rita Banerjee will discuss her journey as a writer and literary citizen, and will share resources on how creative writers can create sustainable, nurturing, and viable careers, writing practices, and literary communities despite the pressures of American capitalism.

About the Author:

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. She is editor of the forthcoming anthology Disobedient Futures (University Press of Kentucky) in which writers imagine what the future cultures of the United States and the world could look like if folks disobeyed gender, tribal, and class paradigms, and explored disobedient forms of environmentalism and borders. She is also the author of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, the poetry collections Echo in Four Beats and Cracklers at Night, the novella โ€œA Night with Kaliโ€ in Approaching Footsteps, and is co-writer of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, tribalism, and intimacy in the United States and in France. Her work appears in Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition, Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writersโ€™ Workshop, which she co-founded at Harvard in 2008. She received a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the bookโ€™s opening chapters โ€œBirth of Cool,โ€ was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter, โ€œThe Female Gaze,โ€ was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.

[1] Reisner, Alex. โ€œThe Unbelievable Scale of AIโ€™s Pirated Book Problem.โ€ The Atlantic. Online. March 20, 2025.

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January 2025 Faculty Lectures from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College Now Available

Theย MFA Program for Writersย recently celebrated its annual winter residency this past January. The residency featured inspiring lectures and classes from both faculty and graduating students. And writers and readers can access the wonderful craft discussions and lectures from the MFA Program for Writers facultyย online here. All MFA Store proceeds directly support graduate student scholarships in the MFA Program for Writers.

Rita Banerjeeโ€™s Opening Lecture,ย “The Poetry and Power of Witness” asks, “How do we as writers process the various kinds of social trauma that inform and affect our daily lives?” In Against Forgetting, Carolyn Forchรฉ argues against an easy descent into forgetfulness or a culture of oblivion as espoused a constant carousel of rotating news headlines. She instead introduces the notion of โ€œpoem as trace, poem as evidenceโ€ and how the work of a writer can serve as a witness to and record of history. And in her introduction to Playing in the dark, Toni Morrison writes that, โ€œWriting and reading mean being aware of the writerโ€™s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability.โ€ Some authors, studied in this talk, who wrestle with both their response and responsibility as witness to their particular social and historical moment, include Carolyn Forchรฉ, Solmaz Sharif, Fatimah Ashgar, Paul Celan, George Abraham, Noor Hindi, Jo Ann Beard, Yoko Tawada, Julio Cortรกzar, Agyeya, James Baldwin, Carvell Wallace, and Carl Phillips.

The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 โ€“ January 2025, and can be accessed here: https://www.wwcmfa.org/store/

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Screening of Vishal Bhardwajโ€™sย Haider – December 10, 2024 * 6:15 pm

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Vishal Bhardwajโ€™s 2014 film,ย Haider,ย an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, on December 10, 2024 from 6:15-8:45 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology atย Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitรคt Mรผnchen, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427).ย  Anyone interested in translation studies, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcomed to join the screening.

โ€œThe Bollywood director Vishal Bhardwaj has made his name by adapting Shakespeare into film, using the plays to reflect the violence and vicissitudes of modern India. Maqbool, an adaptation of Macbeth, was set in the Mumbai underworld; Omkara transported Othello to the feudal badlands of northern India. His latest effort, a loose adaptation of Hamlet called Haider that takes place in Kashmir during the turbulent 1990s, has become one of the most acclaimed and contentious Bollywood movies of the yearโ€ฆ[In the film] Haider is sent away by his parents to Aligarh, a university town in north India, to shelter him from the violence overtaking Kashmir. The movieโ€™s plot is set in motion when he returns to his homeland to search for his father, who has been abducted by the military. Through Haiderโ€™s search, the movie plunges into a looking-glass world, where lies and deception are common, and the government has abandoned human rights and the rule of law to crush the armed insurgency.โ€ โ€“ Vaibhav Vats, The New York Times

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

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July 2024 Faculty Lectures from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College Now Available

Theย MFA Program for Writersย recently celebrated its annual summer residency at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. The residency featured inspiring lectures and classes from both faculty and graduating students. And writers and readers can access the wonderful craft discussions and lectures from the MFA Program for Writers facultyย online here. Rita Banerjeeโ€™s Opening Lecture, “Narrative Design from World Literature: the Kishลtenketsu and West African Griot Tradition,” explores how we can expand our craft knowledge and technique as writers by studying narrative design from world literature. The Japanese kishลtenketsu offers a new way to compose a poem or story beyond the Western emphasis on the plot triangle or Aristotelian idea of โ€œplot is action.โ€ Likewise, the West African Griot Tradition emphasizes the communal aspect of storytelling and notes the import of the storyteller and listener in the creation of a tale the sustains the history of a community and imagines its future. Some authors studied in the talk include Ryลซnosuke Akutagawa, E.J. Koh, Ocean Vuong, Samuel Kแปฬlรกwแปฬlรฉ, Yaa Gyasi, Teju Cole, and JJJJJerome Ellis.

The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 โ€“ July 2024, and can be accessed here: https://www.wwcmfa.org/store/

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Screening of Saim Sadiq’s Joyland- May 14, 2024

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Saim Sadiqโ€™s 2022 film, Joyland, on Tuesday, May 14, 2024 from 6-8:30 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitรคt Mรผnchen. The screening will take place in Seminar Room 427 (Ludwigstr. 31, Munich), and anyone interested in South Asian aesthetics, literary theory, or art-house film is welcome to join the screening. 

โ€œThis year’s Queer Palme winner, and the first ever Pakistani film in the Cannes official selection, Saim Sadiq’s debut impresses with its sensitive storytelling and vibrant visuals… Tartly funny and plungingly sad in equal measure, this is nuanced, humane queer filmmaking, more concerned with the textures and particulars of its own intimate story than with grander social statements โ€” even if, as a tale of transgender desire in a Muslim country, its very premise makes it a boundary-breaker.โ€ โ€“ Guy Lodge, Variety

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

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Screening of Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahฤnฤซ – May 7, 2024

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Sujoy Ghoshโ€™s 2012 film,ย Kahฤnฤซ (Story, เค•เคนเคพเคจเฅ€),ย on Tuesday, May 7, 2024 from 6-8:30 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology atย Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitรคt Mรผnchen.ย The screening will take place in Seminar Room 427 (Ludwigstr. 31, Munich), and anyone interested in South Asian aesthetics, literary theory, or art-house film is welcome to join the screening.ย 

โ€œThe sudden disappearance of an IT contractor in Kolkata triggers a riveting, labyrinthine puzzle, replete with duplicitous spy shenanigans, in Kahaani. Versatile [thespian] powerhouse Vidya Balan follows up her daring vamp in The Dirty Picture with a dazzling portrait of a determined London-based woman traveling to the subcontinent in search of her missing husband. Buttressed by compelling [performances], this adroit thriller makes the occasional misstep but maintains momentum and credibility. Forgoing Bollywoodโ€™s standard musical numbers, the pic could potentially cross over to wider [audiences] with an appetite for thrillers.โ€ โ€“ Russell Edwards, Variety

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

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Rita Banerjee’s Guest Lecture on “Narrative Forms from World Literature” at Yale University | February 21, 2024 * 2:30 pm EST

On Wednesday, February 21, 2024, Dr. Rita Banerjee will be a Visiting Lecturer in Adam Sexton’s Class “The Craft of Fiction” at Yale University. She will present on “Narrative Forms from World Literature: Rasa Theory & Kishลtenketsu” and the lecture details follow below:

“Narrative Forms from World Literature: Rasa Theory & Kishลtenketsu”
A Guest Lecture by Dr. Rita Banerjee
February 21, 2024 | 2:30-3:30 pm EST
Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520

In contemporary American creative writing, theatre, and screenwriting classes, the narrative structures and forms most centered are derived from the Western literary canon. Aristotleโ€™s definition of comedy, tragedy, and catharsis from the Poetics and Gustav Freytagโ€™s โ€œplot triangleโ€ from Die Technik des Dramas are seen as the conventional and standard way by which we analyze and structure storytelling. However, in our class on Narrative Forms from World Literature, we will study and learn from narrative structures, forms, aesthetic theories, and storytelling techniques from a variety of world literatures. We will delve into storytelling forms beyond the plot triangle and will highlight Nonwestern narrative techniques like rasa theory, which centers nine major emotional states to make the connection between viewer and character stronger. Rasa theory derives from Bharataโ€™s Nฤแนญyaล›ฤstra, which acts as a counterpoint to Aristotleโ€™s demarcation of tragedy and comedy from the Poetics. This class will also explore the kishลtenketsu narrative form from Japanese. By studying Narrative Forms from World Literature, students will diversify and strengthen their craft knowledge and technique, and will gain access to storytelling structures, forms, and aesthetic traditions beyond the Anglo-American canon.

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January 2024 Faculty Lectures from MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College Now Available

The MFA Program for Writers recently celebrated its annual winter residency at the Blue Ridge Assembly, the site of the original Black Mountain College in Black Mountain, North Carolina. The residency featured inspiring lectures and classes from both faculty and graduating students. And writers and readers can access the wonderful craft discussions and lectures from the MFA Program for Writers faculty online here. Rita Banerjee’s Opening Lecture, “Translating the World, Translating Ourselves,” explores why translation is such a vital aesthetic, psychic, and embodied craft tool for creative writers. In translating our experiences and ourselves onto the page, we as writers become more aware of the metaphors we live by and can ask ourselves โ€œWhat is the story behind my story, essay, or poem?โ€ Some authors studied in the talk include Basho, Agyeya, Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Rudyard Kipling, James Baldwin, Yoko Tawada, and Jhumpa Lahiri.

The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 โ€“ January 2024, and can be accessed here:ย https://www.wwcmfa.org/store/

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MFA Director Dr. Rita Banerjee will be a Visiting Writer at Warren Wilson College’s Undergraduate Creative Writing Program * October 16-17, 2023

The MFA Program for Writers Director, Dr. Rita Banerjee will be a Visiting Writer in the undergraduate Creative Writing program at Warren Wilson College and will be teaching the creative writing workshop “Narrative Forms from World Literature: Kishลtenketsu and Rasa Theory” on Tuesday, October 17 from 12-1 pm EDT. The workshop’s open to anyone on campus and more details follow below as does information about Dr. Banerjee’s reading on campus on the evening of October 17 from 7-8 pm EDT:

Warren Wilson’s Department of Creative Writing presents
A Reading with Visiting Writer Dr. Rita Banerjee
October 17, 7-8 pm at the Library Loft

Here are the workshop details:

Narrative Forms from World Literature: Kishลtenketsu and Rasa Theory
A Craft Workshop with Dr. Rita Banerjee
October 17, 12-1 pm at the Morris Pavilion

In contemporary American creative writing, theatre, and screenwriting classes, the narrative structures and forms most centered are derived from the Western literary canon. Aristotleโ€™s definition of comedy, tragedy, and catharsis from the Poetics and Gustav Freytagโ€™s โ€œplot triangleโ€ from Die Technik des Dramas are seen as the conventional and standard way by which we analyze and structure storytelling. However, in our workshop on Narrative Forms from World Literature, we will study and learn from narrative structures, forms, aesthetic theories, and storytelling techniques from a variety of world literatures. We will delve into storytelling forms beyond the plot triangle and will highlight Nonwestern narrative techniques like the kishลtenketsu narrative form from Japanese. This workshop will also discuss rasa theory, which centers nine major emotional states to make the connection between viewer and character stronger. Rasa theory derives from Bharataโ€™s Nฤแนญyaล›ฤstra, which acts as a counterpoint to Aristotleโ€™s demarcation of tragedy and comedy from the Poetics. By studying Narrative Forms from World Literature, students will diversify and strengthen their craft knowledge and technique, and will gain access to storytelling structures, forms, and aesthetic traditions beyond the Anglo-American canon.