Dickens Leonard

About

Assistant Professor of Literature at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (from 2021). Had worked as faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta (2020-2021) and the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad (2017-2020), India. Researched on the writings of the nineteenth century Tamil intellectual Iyothee Thass and Tamil Buddhism at UoH for PhD (2017). Was, formerly, a DAAD visiting-PhD fellow (2016) at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Georg-August University, Goettingen, Germany. Has published on anti-caste thought and Tamil films in renowned journals such as Critical Philosophy of Race, South Asia Research, Critical Times, South Asian Popular Culture, Economic and Political Weekly, and Social Scientist; and also in edited anthologies from Bloomsbury, Routledge, Sage, and Sahitya Akademi.

Employment

• Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Assistant Professor in Literature
  2021 - Present
• Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta Assistant Professor
  2020 - 2021
• University of Hyderabad Adjunct Faculty
  2017 - 2020

Education

• Georg-August-Universität Göttingen DAAD Visiting Fellow
  2016 - 2017
• University of Hyderabad PhD
  2011 - 2017
• University of Madras BA
  2004 - 2007

Projects & Funding

Projects & funding information is unavailable.

Publications (15)

• Casting the Historical: The Dalit Heroic in Contemporary Tamil Cinema
  South Asian Review 2026 DOI: 10.1080/02759527.2026.2659405
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• Cast Out Worlds in Print
  Inhabiting Technologies/Modernities: Media and Cultural Practices in South Asia 2025
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• The Anti-Caste Hermeneutic
  Dalit Journeys for Dignity 2025 DOI: 10.2307/jj.27024378.13
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• The Jigsaw of Dis-coloration: Anti-Caste Poetics and The Absent Color
  CASTE / A Global Journal on Social Exclusion 2024 DOI: 10.26812/caste.v5i3.2319
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• Iyothee thassar's buddha and civilizational memory
  Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages: Hierarchy, Humanity and Equality in Indian History 2024
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• Sarithiram as Interpretative Pedagogy: Iyothee Thass's Casteless Community and History
  Critical Philosophy of Race 2023 DOI: 10.5325/critphilrace.11.1.0094
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• Collective Sounds: Pa. Ranjith’s cinema, Gaana, and Fusion Music
  South Asian Popular Culture 2022 DOI: 10.1080/14746689.2022.2115738
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• Magizhchi!: 'The casteless collective' and the sensorial exscription
  The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India 2022 DOI: 10.4324/9781003343578-7
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• Caste-Less Tamils and Early Print Public Sphere
  South Asia Research 2021 DOI: 10.1177/02627280211034858
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• Conscripts of cinema
  Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century 2020 DOI: 10.4324/9780429244025-3
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