Overview
Anindita Banerjee’s research focuses on science fiction and technocultural studies, environmental studies, media studies, and migration studies across Russia, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Latin and African Americas. Working at the interfaces of science, technology, arts, and the environment, she is particularly interested in networks of exchange and innovation that develop outside conventional hubs of modernity.
Banerjee has been a faculty fellow of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability since its inception, receiving an Academic Venture Fund grant as well as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship there. She also served as a member of the Atkinson Center's Faculty Advisory Board for several years. After serving on the committee that established the Environment and Sustainability Program, a new undergraduate major that spans the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, she became the first chair of the environmental humanities concentration in the major. In addition, she serves as a steering committee member of the South Asia Program, and a participating member of cross-college programs in Biology and Society, Media Studies, and Visual Studies. A recent snapshot of her teaching, research, and interdisciplinary collaborations can be found at Nabokov, Naturally, an Arts Unplugged event held on March 15, 2024.
In 2023-25, Banerjee is an Ivy+Mellon Leadership Fellow and a co-chair of the task force for the Global Grand Challenge theme "The Future."
Banerjee has authored and edited a number of books and special issues of flagship journals in the fields of Comparative Literature, Science Fiction Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, and Border and Migration Studies. Her first book, We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity (Wesleyan University Press, 2013), won the Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies book prize from the University of California, and was praised in Science magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Times Higher Education, Comparative Literature Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Slavic Review, and Isis among many academic and public venues in North America, Europe, and Asia. She is an editor of three other books: South of the Future: Marketing Care and Speculating Life in South Asia and the Americas (2020); Science Fiction Circuits of the South and East (2018); and Russian Science Fiction Literature and Cinema: A Critical Reader (2018). She has edited special issues on "Socialist Anti-Racisms: Connected Histories and Contested Legacies" in Comparative Literature Journal (2023); "Border Environments" (2021) in Latin American Literary Review; "Thinking through the Pandemic" (2020) in Science Fiction Studies; "Working Towards Equity" in the Slavic and East European Journal (2020); "Geopoetics" (2016) in Slavic Review; and "World Revolution" (2017) in Slavic and East European Journal.
Banerjee is a founding co-editor of the book series Studies in Global Science Fiction at Palgrave Macmillan, a former co-editor of the journal Science Fiction Film and Television at Liverpool University Press, and an editorial consultant for the following journals and book series: Science Fiction Studies, HiLoBooks at MIT Press, and SFF Canon at Palgrave. She is completing a second single-authored book titled The Chernobyl Effect.
Research Focus
Science, Technology, and Culture; Energy and the Environment; Media Studies; Migration Studies
Publications
BOOKS
We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity, Wesleyan University Press, 2013. Winner of the Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies Book Prize from the University of California for “an outstanding scholarly monograph that explores the intersections between popular culture, particularly science fiction, and the discourses and cultures of technoscience.”
Science Fiction Circuits of the South and East, co-edited with Sonja Fritzsche, Oxford Peter Lang, 2018
Russian Science Fiction Literature and Cinema: A Critical Reader, Academic Studies Press, 2018
South of the Future: Marketing Care and Speculating Life in South Asia and the Americas, co-edited with Debra Castillo. SUNY Press, 2020
SPECIAL ISSUES
Comparative Literature Journal, "Socialist Anti-Racisms: connected Histories and Contested Legacies," co-edited with Gabriella Safran, 75.2 (2023)
Latin American Literary Review, "Border Environments," 48.96 (Summer 2021)
Science Fiction Studies, "Thinking through the Pandemic," co-edited with Sherryl Vint, 47.3 (November 2020)
Slavic and East European Journal, "Working Towards Equity in Slavic Studies," co-edited with Gabriella Safran, 64.4 (Winter 2020)
Slavic Review, “Geopoetics,” co-edited with Jenifer Presto, 75.2 (Summer 2016)
Slavic and East European Journal, “World Revolution,” co-edited with Jenifer Presto, 61.3 (Fall 2017)
Working Papers in Latin American Studies, “Gender, Violence, and Dislocation in South Asia and the Americas,” co-edited with Debra Castillo, Spring 2011
EDITED BOOK SERIES
Founding co-editor, Studies in Global Science Fiction at Palgrave MacMillan
EDITED JOURNAL
Former co-editor, Science Fiction Film and Television (SFFTV), Liverpool University Press
In the news
- Nabokov celebrated for crossing arts/science boundaries
- Events celebrate Nabokov as butterfly scientist
- Class explores Nabokov as writer and ‘butterfly man’
- Banerjee named Mellon Fellow in diversity network
- Author Jemisin builds ‘the world from scratch’
- How are N. K. Jemisin’s novels acts of political resistance?
- Cornell, global partners discuss the next ‘grand challenge’
- What to read in 2022? A&S faculty weigh in
- South Asia, Latin America ‘flashpoints’ of global care markets
- Migrations initiative announces cross-campus awards
- Spring event allows students to explore new Environmental & Sustainability Sciences major
- Book presents alternative cultural history of science fiction
- Cross-college Program in Environment and Sustainability launches
- Students imagine future without fossil fuels
- Cornell holds its first undergraduate psychology conference
- Podcast explores science fiction and the human future
- Imagining the Future
- New edited volume examines Russian science fiction
- Environmental Humanities Lecture Series begins Oct. 4
- Ponder a fossil fuel-free world, then think art
- International collaboration results in play about borders
- Humanists offer critical perspective on climate change
- Anindita Banerjee kickstarts Russian sci-fi
