Faculty at School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Teja Varma Pusapati

Teja Varma Pusapati

Associate Professor

School of Humanities and Social Sciences


Contact Information

I work on Victorian literature and culture, with a particular focus on the developments in professional authorship, women’s writing, journalism and the periodical press, newspaper and magazine culture, feminist writing, and imperial print networks.

My upcoming monograph, Model Women of the Press: Gender, Politics, and Women’s Professional Journalism (Routledge, New York), offers the first extended account of the mid-century rise of ‘model women of the press’: women who not only stormed the male bastions of social and political journalism but also presented themselves as upholders of the highest standards of professional journalistic practice. From Victorian feminists to female mainstream political journalists, from female foreign and war correspondence to even fictional presswomen, all contributed in distinctive ways to the rise of the Victorian female journalist as a serious, high-minded, and professional author. 

A new project on imperial periodicals was awarded a Curran Fellowship by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP)

My articles on Victorian women’s foreign correspondence, feminist journalism, and celebrity culture have appeared in Victorian Periodicals Review, Women’s Writing and Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. A book chapter on the campaign for Victorian women’s entry into medicine was published in Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s–1900s (Edinburgh University Press) and another chapter on mid-century feminist fiction is forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism.

  • BA (Honours) in English. Lady Shri Ram College for Women, New Delhi (2003–2006)
  • MA in English. Delhi University (2006–2008)
  • MPhil in English. Delhi University (2008–2010)
  • DPhil: University of Oxford, UK (2012–2016)
  • (DPhil fully funded by the Felix Scholarship)

01/12 - 03/12
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Gargi College, New Delhi
09/10 - 04/11
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, New Delhi

2017 TORCH Women in the Humanities writing fellowship, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom (January - April 2017) 2017 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Huntington Library, California, United States (June, July 2017) 2015 Felix Scholarship for a D.Phil in English Literature, University of Oxford (2012-2015)

Membership of Research/Professional Bodies

  • Member of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP). Elected to its Board of Directors in 2021. Term ends 2023.
  • Member of the British Association for Victorian Studies

 

  • ‘Going Places: Harriet Martineau’s “Letters from Ireland” and the Rise of the Female Foreign Correspondent’, Women’s Writing, Special issue on Journeys to Authority: Travel Writing and the Rise of the Woman of Letters, 24.2 (2017), 207–226.
  • ‘Crossing the Final Frontier: Harriet Ward as Mid-Victorian War Correspondent’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 49.2 (Summer 2016), 305–332.
  • ‘Novel Networks: The “Specialité" of the English Woman’s Journal’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 47.4 (Winter 2014), 597–612. (Special Issue based on the 2013 RSVP Conference theme, Tradition and the New).
  • ‘Blowing the Cover: News of Emily Crawford's Foreign Correspondence in the 1890s Periodical Press’, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 10.2 (Summer 2014) 〈http://ncgsjournal.com/issue102/pusapati.htm〉.

  • ‘Claiming Medicine as a Profession for Women: The English Woman's Journal's Campaign for Female Doctors’, in Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s-1900s, edited by Alexis Easley, Clare Gill and Beth Rodgers (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp.120–139.

  • (May 2023), ‘On Wanting to Change: Women, Work, and Transformation in Charlotte Yonge’s The Clever Woman of the Family’, Victorian Transformations Conference, Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies in collaboration with the Charlotte M. Yonge Fellowship, hybrid mode.
  • (September 2022), ‘Making the Most of Margins: War in the Outposts of Empire in the United Service Magazine’, Margin/Limit/Periphery/Edge, Annual International Conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals.
  • (December 2021) Invited participant in a discussion on the pandemic-themed film, Contagion Cabaret, made by the Diseases of Modern Life Project at the University of Oxford and Chipping Norton Theatre, UK. The event was hosted by Science Gallery Bengaluru. Discussants included Professor Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford), Dr. Gangandeep Kang (Christian Medical College, Vellore) and the Raghavendra Gadagkar (Science Gallery, Bengaluru)
  •  (September 2021) Invited speaker at Ashoka University’s English Department MA Proseminar. 
  • (January 2021) Invited participant in a panel discussion on ‘Archives and Afterlives: Literary Studies Now’ hosted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS, New Delhi) January 2021
  • (February 2018), ‘Victorian Woman in the Warfield: Harriet Ward’s Reportage of the Seventh Frontier War (1844–47)’, Nineteenth-Century Synergies: Ventures at Home and (Ad)Ventures Abroad Conference, International Conference, Presidency University, Kolkata, India.
  • (June 2017) ‘Reform as Sustenance: Working Women and Middle-Class Culture in the English Woman’s Journal’, Annual British Women Writers Conference, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
  • (May 2017) ‘Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Periodical Press: Harriet Martineau’s Correspondence for New York’s National Anti-Slavery Standard’, Summoning the Archive: A Symposium on the Periodical, Printed Matter, and Digital Archiving, New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge, New York.
  • (September 2016) ‘Writing in Transit: Harriet Martineau’s Itinerant Reportage of Post-Famine Ireland’, Consuming (the) Victorians, Annual Conference of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) held at the University of Cardiff.
  • (October 2015) ‘Living on The Edge: Harriet Ward and the Construction of Militaristic Wifehood on the Eastern Cape Frontier, 1844–47’, Imperial Identities: Intersections and Transformations, Workshop sponsored by the Centre for Gender, Identity and Subjectivity, History Faculty, Oxford.
  • (June 2015) ‘Female Foreign Correspondence and the Signs of Colonial Modernity: Harriet Martineau’s “Letters from Ireland”’, Victorian Modernities, International Conference held at the University of Kent.
  • (April 2015) ‘“Bonâ fide” Communications: Woman Writer as Facilitator of Female Colonial Emigration in the Mid-Century Press’, Networks of Media and Print in the Age of Imperialism Conference, University of Warwick. 
  • (November 2014) ‘Harriet Martineau’s War Correspondence’, War, Travel, Travel Writing Conference, University of East Anglia.
  • (September 2014) ‘In the Name of Sustenance: Working Women and Middle-Class Culture in the English Woman's Journal’, Victorian Sustainability, Annual Conference of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS), University of Kent.
  • (July 2014) ‘Making the Most of Gifts: The Woman Writer as a Useful Professional in Charlotte Yonge's Mid-Century Novels', Reassessing Women's Writing of the 1840s and 1850s, International Conference held at Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent.
  • (July 2014) ‘“Letters from Ireland”: Harriet Martineau as Travelling Foreign Correspondent', New Horizons Conference, the Chawton House Library, UK.
  • (June 2014) ‘Colonizing through Correspondence: Harriet Martineau's “Letters from Ireland”’, Print Culture and Gender in the British Empire, Conference held at University of Warwick.
  • (June 2014) ‘Reporting the Colony: Harriet Martineau's “Letters from Ireland”', Victorian Graduate Seminar, University of Oxford.
  • (October 2013) ‘Reporting from the Field: Harriet Martineau as Foreign Correspondent’, Navigating Networks: Women, Travel and Female Communities, Interdisciplinary Conference, Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

  • (2017) Curran Fellowship awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) for research on nineteenth-century imperial periodicals.
  • (January–April 2017) TORCH Women in the Humanities writing fellowship at the University of Oxford, UK.
  • (May–June 2017) Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Huntington Library in California, United States.

NA

  • (2022) Elected to the Board of Directors of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP). All Directors on the Board are elected to a two-year term.