Dhritii Dutta is currently pursuing her PhD at the department of Performance Studies, University of Hyderabad, India. She has obtained a BA in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and completed her MA at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi. Her academic training in literature has been crucial to her navigation through multidisciplinary research methodologies that prompted her towards an unorthodox re-visioning of literary practices and their adaptations across media. Her MA in Arts and Aesthetics, through its variegated disciplinary foci inspired her interest around various loci of sociocultural anthropology, visual arts and performance studies. Her current research interests revolve around the thriving scenes of stand-up comedy in India as a tool to study the post 1990s caste-class-cultural transitions. She is fascinated by the endless potential of humour, both as a performative and literary device, which resonates within her current project and takes into consideration a global cultural phenomenon via its local implications.

Research Project at EXC "Temporal Communities":

‘Media’ and its ‘Materials’ : Stand-Up Comedy as a Site of Contestation of Class-Caste-Religious-Gender Dynamics in 21st Century India