Sheetal Kumari is a Full-time Research Scholar at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. She is an Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Researcher at the University of Oklahoma. Her doctoral work focuses on child sex trafficking narratives and interpretations of trauma. Her proposed thesis title is Child Abuse and Trauma in Select Sex Trafficking Narratives: Intervening Commodity, Cultural Ambivalence, and Resilience. She has published a number of research articles in reputed peer-reviewed journals such as Journal for Cultural Research, Children’s Literature in Education, New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, New Literaria, and Asiatic. She is a recipient of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) Award. She is a teaching assistant in NPTEL courses on ‘Partition Literature,’ ‘Fiction: Epics, Novels and Poetry,’ ‘Performative Gender and Religions in South Asia,’ and 'Literary Theory and Criticism.'
Research Interests: Trauma Studies, Memory Studies, Children's and YA Fiction, Medical Humanities, and Film Studies
Professional Background:
PhD (pursuing), Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, in Children’s and YA Literature and Trauma Studies
MA (2018-2020), BBM Koyalanchal University, Dhanbad, India, in English Literature, Dissertation – University Wits: Preparing the Stage for Shakespeare under the guidance of Dr. Himanshu Shekhar Choudhary
BA (2015-2018), Vinoba Bhave University, Hazaribag, India, in English Literature
Languages – English, Hindi, Japanese (Basic), French (Basic)
NPTEL (Teaching Assistant) – Partition Of India in Print Media and Cinema (2022), Fiction: Epics, Novels and Poetry (2022-23), Performative Gender and Religions in South Asia (2023), and Literary Theory and Criticism (2025)
Courses Taught - Soft Skills (Basic and Advanced), Phonetic Lab (Basic)
Grants and Awards:
Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Researcher at the University of Oklahoma (2026)
Open Society Foundations (OSF) for attending the London Critical Theory Summer School (LCTSS) 2025 at Birkbeck, University of London (2025)
Initiative for Excellence-University Research (IDUB) in collaboration with Erasmus Mundus International Master: Children’s Literature, Media & Cultural Entrepreneurship - Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland (2025)
Publications:
Kumari, Sheetal. “Narrating Injustice: Portrayal of Sex Trafficking, Violence, and Human Rights in Indian Cinema.” The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems, edited by Rajendra Baikady, S. M. Sajid, Jaroslaw Przeperski, Varoshini Nadesan, M. Rezaul Islam, and Jianguo Gao, Palgrave Macmillan, Springer Nature, 2026, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68127-2_698-1
Kumari Sheetal. “Cinematic Framing of Child Trafficking: Victims and Perpetrators in Netflix’s Bhakshak and Sector 36." Journal of Underrepresented and Minority Progress, vol. 9, no. 5, 2025, pp. 186-210. https://doi.org/10.32674/x8873t30
Kumari, Sheetal. “Is She Still There?: Child Sex Trafficking, Traumatic Memory and Resilience in Mischa Marcus’ Film I Am Still Here.” CINEJ Cinema Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, Dec. 2025, pp. 389-425, https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2025.730
Kumari, Sheetal. “Unspeakability and Trauma: A Reading of Child Sex Trafficking Narratives.” New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, vol. 31, no. 1-2, 2025, pp. 135–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614541.2025.2587134
Kumari, Sheetal. “The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature and Culture: Edited by Claudia Nelson, Elisabeth Wesseling, and Andrea Mei-Ying Wu, Abingdon, Routledge, 2024, 568 pp., £184.00 (Hardback), ISBN 9781032103594.” New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, vol. 31, no. 1-2, 2025, pp. 39–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614541.2025.2542793
Kumari, Sheetal, and Sarbani Banerjee. “Mapping Trauma and Affect: Reading Child Body as Commodity in Patricia McCormick’s Sold.” New Literaria, vol. 6, no. 1, Feb. 2025, pp. 96-108. https://dx.doi.org/10.48189/nl.2025.v06i1.010
Kumari, Sheetal, and Sarbani Banerjee. “The ‘Red-Light’ Community: Collective Trauma and Identity in Tracey Hoffmann’s Valley of Chaya.” Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, vol. 18, no. 2, Dec. 2024, pp. 120-137. https://doi.org/10.31436/asiatic.v18i2.3424
Kumari, Sheetal, and Sarbani Banerjee. “I Think Hope Coexists with Pain and Trauma.” Questioning Patricia McCormick About Sold, Child Trafficking, and Sexual Violence. Children’s Literature in Education, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-024-09600-z
Kumari, Sheetal, and Sarbani Banerjee. “Trauma scrambles things, trauma fragments…” A cross-cultural conversation with Corban Addison in the context of A Walk Across the Sun. Journal for Cultural Research, vol. 29, no. 3, 2024, pp. 502–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2024.2400904
Kumari, Sheetal. “Rethinking Resilience, Traversing Trauma: A Study of Sexually Abused Children and Young Adults in Tracey Hoffmann’s Valley of Chaya” ISSN: 2758-0970 The Paris Conference on Arts & Humanities 2024 Official Conference Proceedings, pp. 105-112. https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2024.10
Conference, Seminars and Workshops:
“Reconstructing Identity and Memory at the Edge of Life: An Exploration of Iterative Selfhood in Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air” in the 5th Annual Indian Network of Memory Studies (INMS) Conference on Memory Studies: "Memory, Narrative Designs, and Strategies for Preservation," organized by Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, from 27th to 29th October 2025.
Attended Online Summer School: "Medical Humanities: Discourses, Debates, and Directions" organized by IISER Bhopal in collaboration with the South Asian Medical-Environmental Humanities Network, 17-23 July 2025.
“I Want to Talk and Run a Marathon: A Cinematic Exploration of Terminal Cancer and Survival” in the international conference on “Embracing the Paradigm Shift: Navigating the Interdisciplinary Frontiers in Humanities & Social Sciences Research” at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, from 11th to 12th July 2025.
“Unseen Trauma of Child Trafficking: Exploring Displacement and Sexual Violence in Nair’s Chain of Custody” in the 27th Biennial International Research Society for Children’s Literature 2025 Congress: “Borders, Migration and Liminality in Children’s Literature” at the University of Salamanca (Spain), from 21st to 25th June 2025.
“Confronting Trauma, Embracing Resilience: An Exploration of Self Recovery through Narrative in James A. Levine’s The Blue Notebook” in the 4th International Symposium and Workshops for Early Career Researchers in Children's Literature: ‘Children’s Literature for Understanding the Past, Shaping the Present, and Determining the Future’ organized by The Centre for Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University of Wrocław, in collaboration with the University of Aveiro and the Consortium of the Erasmus Mundus International Master: Children’s Literature, Media & Cultural Entrepreneurship from 19th-20th March 2025.
“Writing Trauma and Role of Gender and Culture in Trafficking Narratives: A Comparative Study of Patricia McCormick’s Sold and Corban Addison’s A Walk Across the Sun” in the panel “Growing Up with Trauma” at Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies in India (IACLALS) Annual Conference 2025 “Trauma, Resilience, and Healing: Representations in South Asian Literature and Culture" organized by BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, from 20th to 22nd February 2025.
“Healing Memories and Trauma: Contextualizing Human Trafficking and Sexual Violence in Corban Addison’s A Walk Across the Sun” in the panel “Memory of conflict and violence” at MSA Forward 2024 “Memories in Transit”, the online workshop organized by Memory Studies Association, from 7th to 8th November 2024.
“Contextualizing Child Body as Commodity, Affect, and Trauma: Reading Patricia McCormick’s Sold” at the 5th International e-Conference “Bridging Realms: Exploring Intersections in Humanities and Social Sciences”, organized by New Literaria: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities in collaboration with the Department of History, Humanities and Society, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy, and the Department of English, Central University of Karnataka, India from 4th to 5th October 2024.
“Trauma-telling, Gender, and Culture: A Comparative Analysis of Select Child Trafficking Narratives” at the International Conference, “Trauma and Resilience in Contemporary World Literature” organized by the Department of Letters and Foreign Languages at Tamanghasset University in collaboration with the Linguistic and Literary Practices in the Desert of Algeria and their Extensions in the Sahel Region Research Laboratory, from 25th to 26th September 2024.
“Rethinking Resilience, Traversing Trauma: A Study of Sexually Abused Children and Young Adults in Tracey Hoffmann’s Valley of Chaya” in the panel “Life in Literature Studies” at the 3rd Paris Conference on Arts and Humanities (PCAH2024), organized by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) in Paris, France, from 13th to 17th June 2024.
“Special Topics and Concerns in the Community” (Chaired) and “Navigating the Dark World of Child Sex Trafficking: Violence and Trauma in Anita Nair’s Chain of Custody” (presented) at the 15th Asian Conference on Arts and Humanities (ACAH2024) organized by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) held in Tokyo, Japan and online from 23rd to 27th May 2024.
“The ‘Red-Light’ Community and Collective Trauma: Reading Tracey Hoffmann’s Valley of Chaya” in a panel “Violence/Trauma: memory and post memory in literature” at the 23rd MELOW International Conference on “Borders, Boundaries, Lines of Control: Literature across Disciplines in Contemporary Times” held in Chandigarh on 6-8 October 2023.
“Unheard Emotions of Body: Contextualizing Affect and Trauma in Tracey Hoffmann’s Valley of Chaya” at the 5th “Memory, Affects and Emotions” International Interdisciplinary Conference organized by InMind Support (Poland) with the University of Gdansk in association with Memory Studies Association (MSA), Poland on 27 and 28 April 2023.
“Is She Still There? Reading Child Sex Trafficking, Trauma, and Survival in Mischa Marcus’ Movie, I Am Still Here (2017)” at A Three-Day International Young Researchers’ Conference through the Hybrid Mode on “New Research in English Studies” organized by The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad on 26 to 28 April 2023.
“Reading Commercialized Body, Sexual Violence and Childhood Trauma in Patricia McCormick’s Sold” in the Two-Day Multidisciplinary Online National Conference on “Embodied Identities: The Body in Cultural Spaces” organized by Forum for Research in English, Centre for Advanced Studies and Research in English Language and Literature, Department of English, Farook College (Autonomous), Calicut, on 21 & 22 February 2023.
Attended a Five-Day National Training Programme on “Combating Human Trafficking” organized by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences at the Mumbai Campus from 19th to 23rd December 2022.
Attended a Six-Day virtual program on ‘Changing Perceptions of Childhood and Children’s Literature’ organized by the All India Forum for English Students, Scholars, and Trainers from 9th October to 14th October 2022.
Attended Postgraduate Research Symposium “Memory, Crisis, and Estrangement” organized by the Centre for Memory Studies, IIT Madras, and the Cultural Identity and Memory Studies (CIMS) Institute, the University of St Andrews, supported by the British Council’s Going Global Partnerships Grant on 22nd April 2022.
Memberships and Affiliations:
International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL)
Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (ChLA)
Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World (MELOW)
Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies in India (IACLALS)
Memory Studies Association (MSA)
INMS (Indian Network for Memory Studies)
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)