Bio
Manju Jaidka is a professor and former Chairperson of the English Department at Panjab University, Chandigarh. She is the recipient of several national and international fellowships including a Fulbright Research Grant to Harvard and Yale Universities, a Rockefeller Residency at the Bellagio Study Centre, a fellowship at the Salzburg Center, a Rockefeller Visiting Professorship at the University of Iowa, a visiting professorship at New York University, and the Lillian Robinson Fellowship from the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at the University of Concordia, Montreal. As a creative writer she has published a collection of poems, a play, and three novels, the latest Amaltas Avenue in 2014. She has also authored a dozen academic books and more than fifty research papers in reputed national and international journals. She was the Chairperson of the prestigious Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi from 2008 to 2015 and is presently the chief functionary of MELOW (the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World) In this capacity she organizes international conferences successfully every year. Jaidka has also held the post of Executive Director of the International American Studies Association and also serves on the advisory board of several international organizations.