Professor Chandak Sengoopta

Research interests* Teaching interests* Publications* Areas of research supervision* Contact detail

Research interests

I have three major research interests: the history of European medicine, the history of modern science in India, and the cultural history of modern India.  In all these apparently disparate areas, I focus on the fundamental theme of identity and how sexual, racial and cultural identities are constructed, interpreted and disseminated in different historical contexts.  The latest product of this research is the book, The Most Secret Quintessence of Life: Sex, Glands and Hormones, 1850-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2006), which investigates how the discovery of sex hormones transformed our notions of “male” and “female”.  An earlier study analyzed the biomedical roots of the Viennese philosopher Otto Weininger’s notorious ideas on femininity and “Jewishness.”  I have also researched the emergence of identification techniques and their relation to broader social and cultural factors in Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India  (Macmillan 2003).  Whilst retaining my interest in the history of medicine and science, I am currently working on a major new project on the historical, cultural and ideological contexts that shaped the work and impact of the film-maker, writer, designer and composer Satyajit Ray (1921-1992).  A major aim of the study is to analyze how Ray's films, in spite of their profoundly Bengali/Indian setting and tone, came to be seen, especially by Western critics, as timeless and universal.  Unlike the many biographical and critical studies on Ray, my project seeks to historicize his work and career, showing how they were shaped by the interplay of his three identities as a Bengali, an Indian and a “universal humanist”.

Teaching interests

Currently, I teach one Group 2 undergraduate course (“The Age of Science”), four MA options (“The Victorian Communication Revolution”; “Darwin, Darwinism and the Modern World”, “Freud and Psychoanalysis: Past, Present, and Future”; and “An Empire of Knowledge: Science, Colonialism and Nationalism in British India”).  I co-teach another MA option (“Mind, Body and Self in Victorian Britain”) with Dr Nicola Bown of the Department of English, and “Asian Nationalisms” with Dr Julia Lovell and Dr Naoko Shimazu of the Department of History.  I am the Programme Director of the MA in World History.

Publications

The Most Secret Quintessence of Life: Sex, Glands, and Hormones, 1850-1950, University of Chicago Press, 2006.

• Review by Elizabeth Siegel Watkins in JAMA-Journal of the American Medical Association:

www.jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/296/19/2379-a (subscription)

Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India, Macmillan, 2003.

• Japanese translation: Bungei Shunju (Tokyo), 2004

• Review by Kevin Rushby in the Guardian: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,904256,00.html

Otto Weininger: Sex, Science, and Self in Imperial Vienna, University of Chicago Press, 2000.

• Czech translation: Academia (Prague), 2009

• H-NET review by Volker Depkat: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=5648

• Review by Jason Cowley in the New Statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/200008210030

Publications – Selected Articles

“Satyajit Ray: Liberalism and its Vicissitudes,” Cineaste [New York], 34, no 4 (Fall 2009): 16-22

  Satyajit Ray (1921-1992)

"'Dr Steinach Coming to Make Old Young': Sex Glands, Vasectomy and the Quest for Rejuvenation in the Roaring Twenties", Endeavour, 27 (2003): 22-26.

"'A Mob of Incoherent Symptoms?' Neurasthenia in British Medical Discourse," in: Marijke-Gijswijt Hofstra and Roy Porter (Eds), Cultures of Neurasthenia from Beard to the First World War (Rodopi, 2001), pp. 97-115.

"Transforming the Testicle: Science, Medicine and Masculinity, 1800-1950", Medicina nei Secoli Arte e Scienza, 13, no. 3 (2001): 637-655.

"The Modern Ovary: Constructions, Meanings, Uses," History of Science, 38 (2000): 425-88.

"Glandular Politics: Experimental Biology, Clinical Medicine, and Homosexual Emancipation in Fin-de-Siècle Central Europe," Isis, 89 (1998): 445-73.

"'The Organic Mendacity of Woman': Otto Weininger, Hysteria, and the Political Ontology of the Self," History of Psychiatry, 9 (1998): 405-429.

"The Unknown Weininger: Science, Philosophy, and Cultural Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna," Central European History, 29 (1996): 453-93.

"Rejuvenation and the Prolongation of Life: Science or Quackery?," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 37 (1993): 55-66.

"Science, Sexuality, and Gender in the Fin de Siècle: Otto Weininger as Baedeker," History of Science, 30 (1992): 249-79.

Areas of research supervision

I would be happy to supervise projects on the history of modern medicine and the life sciences, British and Central European cultural history; the history of colonialism (particularly on science and medicine in the British Empire); and the cultural history of modern India.

Contact details

Email: c.sengoopta@bbk.ac.uk

Room: 271 (Malet Street)