Dr. Smita is a faculty member at the School of Languages and Literature, Nalanda
University. She was a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) at the
University of Kansas, USA. She obtained a PhD from the Department of
English, Patna University, India, for her thesis “Anorexic Bodies and
Sexuality in Select Victorian Texts: A Critical Study”. She has also completed
a Post Graduate Diploma in English Language Teaching from the English &
Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.
Dr. Smita specializes in the area of Gender Studies and
English Literature with a focus on health and illness narratives. She
is currently working on a book Literature, Dharma, and Cosmos: Foundations
of an Indic Critical Framework (working title)that seeks to articulate
Indic literary theories rooted in Bharatiya epistemologies, emphasizing their
holistic, ethically grounded, and cosmologically integrated approach to
understanding literature and the world.
Prior to joining Nalanda University, Dr. Smita was teaching
and contributing to academia as an Assistant Professor at the Dept of English,
Sarala Birla University, Ranchi, and also at SRM University, Sikkim. She has
taught courses on Literature and Gender, Victorian Literature, Health and
Illness Narratives in British Fiction, 16th to 19th Century, and Basic
Linguistics and Phonetics. She has represented Bharat, and the Nalanda
University at the University of Oxford to present
her research, titled “The Feminine Divine: Exploring the Essence of the
Universe in Indian Vedic Literature,” at the University of Oxford, London, UK,
in July 2024.