The Ratna Chatterjee Memorial Lecture

The third Ratna Chatterjee Memorial Lecture was organised by the Department of English on April 5, 2023. This lecture was in the hybrid mode with several invitees and members of partner colleges attending the event online.

Professor Ratna Chatterjee was the first Head of the Department of English. Her students remember her as a woman of great erudition and an inspiring teacher. Members of Miss Chatterjee's family instituted this annual Memorial Lecture in celebration of her achievements.

The programme began with a welcoming speech by the Principal of Loreto College, Sr Dr Christine Coutinho.

One of Miss Chatterjee's illustrious students, a scholar of international repute, Professor Julie Banerjee Mehta then shared her reminisces of her teacher and mentor with the audience.

This was followed by the lecture delivered by Supriya Chaudhuri, Professor Emerita, Jadavpur University. Detective fiction was a passion Professor Chaudhuri shared with Miss Ratna Chatterjee, and that was the subject of her lecture entitled _*Between Disclosure and Concealment: the Detective Story as a Modernist Text*.

Sketching a quick history of the evolution of the short story, traditionally a closed text with a clearly marked ending, Professor Chaudhuri examined its transformation in response to Modernism the rise of which coincided with the Golden Age of Detective fiction. She ended with a brief reference to contemporary detective fiction.