J. Birjepatil - English Literature
Literature professor J. Birjepatil first came to the United States as a post-doctoral fellow at Yale. Subsequently he served for two years at Brown as Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature and Theatre Arts. Beyond that his past is "a patchwork quilt of multiculturalism," as he himself expresses it, "a constant search for roots across three continents." Born in India and educated in England, Birje has published poems and scholarly works in Indian, British and American journals. He has also published a novel Chinnery's Hotel (
Bodiam Books,
2005), and is currently at work on another. His academic credits include training in theater, in which he won a Gold Medal Certificate from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Birje's course offerings at Marlboro range from "Shakespeare and his Contemporaries" to British and American fiction, poetry and drama. He has produced and directed more than 50 plays. As a creative writer operating primarily from a Third World perspective, Birje has been particularly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. "My approach to literature is semiotic and dialogic," he says, "but I part company with the signifier that floats beyond the range of human intelligence." Although technically retired, Birje returns to Marlboro to teach one course in literature each semester.
B.A., The Maharajah Sayajirao University (Baroda, India), 1956; M.A. The Maharajah Sayajirao University (Baroda, India), 1958; M.A., University of Manchester (U.K.) 1965; Ph.D., University of Manchester (U.K.) ,1968; Marlboro College, 1987-