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Nabaparna Ghosh

  • Associate Professor
Academic Division: History & Society
Nabaparna Ghosh is a historian of modern South Asia. Her teaching and research interests focus on the multiple meanings of urban modernity, empire and colonialism, colonial and postcolonial cities, caste and urban space, and histories of environmental transformations.

Professor Ghosh's book, A Hygienic City-Nation: Space, Community, and Everyday Life in colonial Calcutta( Cambridge University Press, 2020) goes beyond town plans and maps to explore how caste and kinship ties configured urban space in South Asia, crafting areas of self-government within colonial town plans. Professor Ghosh is currently working on her second book, which explores the history of water in South Asia and how caste segregates the knowledge of water. With dwindling groundwater resources in India, the book is a timely effort to understand the socio-cultural dynamics that influence water management.

Academic Degrees

  • Ph D, Princeton University
  • MA, Princeton University
  • MA, Presidency College

Academic Interest / Expertise

Global History, South Asia, Urban History, Environmental History

Awards & Honors

  • 2019 — Travel Award, Global Urban History Project
  • 2017 — Fellowship for the Summer Institute on Space, Place, and the Humanities at Northeastern University, National Endowment for the Humanities
  • 2013 — Princeton University International and Regional Studies Institute, dissertation Completion Award,, Princeton University

Courses

  • Degree Courses 2024

    • HIS 4626 GLOBAL CITIES
    • HSS 2041 GLOBAL GOODS
    • HSS 2006 SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY
  • Degree Courses 2023

    • FCI 1000 FOUNDATIONS OF CRITICAL INQUIRY
    • HIS 4626 GLOBAL CITIES
    • HSS 2006 SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY

Publications

Journal Articles

  • Ghosh, N. (2024). Water as the 'Other': Crafting land-water binary in colonial South Asia. Environment and History.
  • Ghosh, N. (2022). Inheriting Caste: The judicial construction of a BengaIi-Kayastha identity. Taylor and Francis. link
  • Ghosh, N. (2016). Modern Designs: History and Memory in Le Corbusier's Chandigarh. Journal of Architecture and Urbanism. Vol: 40, Issue: 3. Taylor and Francis.

Books

  • Ghosh, N. (2020). A Hygienic City Nation: Space, Community, and Everyday Life in Colonial Calcutta. Page: 241 pgs. Cambridge University Press.

Presentations

  • Modernity in South Asian Cities Ghosh, N. Urban History Conference, Leicester (2023)
  • Colonial river making in Sunderban's tidal estuaries Ghosh, N. Annual Conference on South Asia, Wisconsin Madison (2022)
  • Caste, Property, and an Entangled History of colonial capitalism Ghosh, N. International Planning History Society, Moscow [ cancelled and made online because of COVID] (2020)
  • Property and its makings in colonial Calcutta Ghosh, N. Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, Wisconsin (2019)
  • The idea of the Para: Space and Community in colonial cities. Ghosh, N. Cities and Sustainability, Gottingen (2019)
  • The global versus local in making space in colonial Calcutta Ghosh, N. The Pursuit of Global Urban History, University of Leicester (2019)
  • Everyday Space and Neighborhoods in South Asia Ghosh, N. Urban Affairs Association, Los Angeles (2019)
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Professional Services

  • Editorial Review Board Member Global Nineteenth-Century Studies (2020 - 2023)
  • Reviewer, Journal Article Journal of Asian Architecure and Building Engineering (2019 - 2019)