Dr. Maninder Järleberg

External PhD candidate
Modern and Contemporary Literature
m.jarleberg@uu.nl

As a PhD candidate Maninder Järleberg is writing a dissertation on the transcultural ways in which the British appropriation of sati provided the nineteenth century writers with tools that enabled the flowering of new woman fiction and the rise of the fallen woman. With a goal of highlighting the relationship between the nineteenth century feminist fiction/non-fiction and the appropriation of sati from a transnational lens, she intends to present a relationship between the colonial India and imperial Britain that goes beyond the traditional historical narrative of cultural exchanges. In this sense, this work will view colonial transnational and cross-cultural transfers as being part of a multidirectional process through which India had a significant impact on Europe and its ideas. Drawing on the field of memory studies, post-colonialism, transcultural studies, and the idea of transnational histories it will analyze the contemporary historical material and literary fiction from 1850's onwards to highlight the significant contribution of the oriental 'other'—such as sati—to the formation of modern western gendered identities.