Chotteyandamada Sowmya Dechamma

Chotteyandamada Sowmya Dechamma from Kodagu is an associate professor, Centre for Comparative Literature; University of Hyderabad has been awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship for the year 2019-2020.She will be hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature, Queens College, The City University of New York where she will teach a course on “Modern Indian Literary Cultures” and work on her research project “Understanding the Modern: Of Moralities and Languages”.

Career

Apart from teaching Comparative Indian Literature and Cultural Discourses in Contemporary India, her research interests include Minority Discourse and Kodava Language and Culture.

Achievements

• Prior to teaching in the University of Hyderabad, she taught English in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
• She has visited the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Visiting Scholar during Feb-June 2005.
• She was a Commonwealth Fellow at the University of Southampton during September 2010 – February 2011 and was awarded the Indo-Hungarian Education Exchange Program for teachers during 2010.

Research Articles

• Translating Modernity: Colonial Modernity and the Modern Child in Early -Children’s Literature in Kannada”, South Asian Review, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, December, 2007
• “Ecofeminism” and Its Discontents: The Indian Context” in Women, Gender and Research. No. 3-4, 2009, December 2009.
•  “Kodava”: Questions of Language, Identity and Cultural Hegemonies”, in Difference, Democracy and Discourse, M. T. Ansari and Deepta Achar, Eds. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. 2010
• The Model Minority: Problematizing the Representation of Kodavas in Kannada Cinema”, in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 13, Issue 1, 2012.
•  Of Death, Rituals and Songs for the Dead: Kodavas and their Histories Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific”Issue 33, October 2013.
• “Entry for Kodava” in the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, Bhasha, 2013.
• “Scripting Language: Scripting Translation” in Textual Travels: Theory and Practice of Translation in India. Edited by Mini Chandran and Suchitra Mathur, Routledge, 2014.
•  “On Teaching Sanskrit and Mother Tongues”, Economic and Political Weekly,Vol – XLIX No. 47, November 22, 2014.

Awards

• She was awarded the Indo-Hungarian Education Exchange Program for teachers in 2010.
• She was awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship for the year 2019-2020.