Binita Mehta, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Binita Mehta is currently the Chair of the French Department at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, NY, where she teaches courses in French language, literature, culture, and film, as well as courses on the literature and film of the South Asian diaspora.  Her book Widows, Pariahs, and "Bayadères": India as Spectacle was published by Bucknell University Press in 2002. 

She has read papers at several conferences, most recently in March 2012 at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NEMLA) annual conference held in Rochester, New York. Also in March 2012, she was part of a panel discussion with colleagues from SUNY Purchase College on Francophone Short Films screened at the Avon Theatre, in Stamford CT. The screenings were organized by the Alliance Française of Greenwich, CT.

She has published articles and book chapters in the fields of French and Francophone literature and film and South Asian diasporic literature and film.  Her most recent article, “Bhaji, Curry, and Masala: Food and/as Identity in Four Films of the Indian Diaspora,” was published in June 2011 in PoCoPages, edited by Rita Christian and Judith Misrahi-Barak, in the collection “Horizons Anglophones” (Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée). Another article, “Memories in/of Diaspora: Barlen Pyamootoo’s Bénarès,” was published in summer 2010 in a special issue of the journal L’Esprit Créateur entitled Indianités francophones/Indian Ethnoscapes in Francophone Literature, edited by Brinda Mehta and Renée Larrier.

In June 2010, Professor Mehta was selected to be part of a group of faculty from various universities and colleges in the US to attend a week-long Faculty Development Seminar organized by the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) in Paris, France. The seminar was entitled “Religions Diversity in France: Jews and Muslims, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in France.”  In November 2010, as part of the Faculty Lecture Series, Professor Mehta discussed her experiences during the June seminar with Manhattanville College students, faculty and staff.

Since spring 2004, Professor Mehta has been organizing an annual French Film Festival on the Manhattanville College campus that is open to members of the Manhattanville College community as well as to local residents from surrounding communities. For five of those years, she received grants from FACE (French American Cultural Exchange) to screen these contemporary French films on campus. 

In October 2004, Professor Mehta co-organized a joint Manhattanville College-SUNY Purchase interdisciplinary conference at Manhattanville College entitled, Haiti: 200 Years of Independence.”