Palak Taneja, literature and writing
By Rob Levin
College of the Atlantic is pleased to welcome Palak Taneja as a new faculty member in literature and writing.
As a child, Taneja made her way to and from school in busy Jalandhar, India, once the site of one of the largest refugee camps in the world. An overly quiet student who liked best to blend into the background, Taneja was brilliant with her studies and loved to learn, but so shy that barely a teacher knew her name. That all began to change when she discovered the power of literature, and a series of excellent English teachers helped her discover that stories could serve as a medium through which to understand the world, and gain one’s voice in the process.
Later, studying English at the University of Delhi, a fascinating world of ideas opened up for Taneja as she read and discussed texts that talked about Marxism, postcolonialism, and other theories of modern life, and began to understand how these ideas filtered down through the stories we tell one another, and the way that people search for meaning in the day to day.
“It was a way of understanding the world through literature and seeing some of the biases and some of the things that exist on a deeper level, and knowing that even in, say the 1940s, when equality wasn’t a thing, there were some people who were progressive enough, who wrote about women as full-fledged characters,” she said. “Literature always gives you the hope that better things are possible. I am personally not an optimistic person, so literature helps me balance that out. Even though most of the stuff that I read is sort of tragic, there is always a sliver of hope in there somewhere.”
It’s this life-changing power of books and stories that compelled Taneja to continue studying English at Emory University, where she received a MA and PhD in English. For her doctoral dissertation, she focused on the partition literature of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and the way that objects have played a central role in the lives of those who have lived, and continue to live, through decades of upheaval in the area.
“A lot of my work has to do with trying to discover that part of myself, because I come from a family that underwent partition. Both sides of my family were in what is now known as Pakistan, and a lot of those stories I couldn’t get access to directly because my grandparents had passed, so I’ve gotten many of those stories from the objects that my family has and the stories that they associate with it,” she said. “That was the personal motivation that sparked that research, but more generally I’m interested in the idea of hierarchical systems in society, classes, gender, caste, race, and how those get influenced and reflected in post-colonial literature.”
COA is fortunate to have Taneja join the college as a new faculty member, provost Ken Hill said. “Her focus on postcolonial literature, South Asian studies, and digital humanities will expand and strengthen our curriculum. We are delighted to have her join our team.”
Taneja is excited to be working within COA’s interdisciplinary pedagogy, for the many possibilities of a human-ecological perspective, and by the highly engaged nature of COA students.
“When I interviewed here I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that students were a part of the process, how they were asking questions, and how very active they were with it,” she said. “I hadn’t seen that before, and I was appreciative of that fact because I remembered being one of those invisible students in school.”
Taneja is the recipient of a number of awards, including the QTM Advanced Graduate Completion Fellowship, Department of Quantitative Theory and Methods, Emory University. Her publications include; “Partition: Oral Histories” (Postcolonial Studies @ Emory); and “Book Review: This Side/That Side Restorying Partition: Graphic Narratives from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh curated by Vishwajyoti Ghosh” (Postcolonial Studies @ Emory).
In her free time, Taneja enjoys spending time with her kitten, Syaah, and rooting for the Atlanta United Football Club. She is enjoying exploring Bar Harbor and getting to know Acadia National Park.
