Faculty at School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Teja Varma Pusapati

Teja Varma Pusapati

Associate Professor

School of Humanities and Social Sciences


Contact Information

I work on nineteenth-century British literature and culture; developments in professional authorship; periodicals and print culture; women’s writing and history; political and social reform; imperial print networks; media and the environment in the long nineteenth-century. I hold a BA (honours), MA, and MPhil in English from Delhi University, India and a DPhil in English from the University of Oxford, UK. At Oxford, I was a Felix scholar. 

My first monograph, Model Women of the Press: Gender, Politics, and Women’s Professional Journalism (Routledge: New York, 2024), offered the first extended account of the mid-century rise of ‘model women of the press’: atypical but exemplary women writers who stormed the male bastions of social and political journal­ism. It drew on extensive archival research to offer fresh insights into the working lives of celebrity writers like Harriet Martineau and lesser-known figures such as Eliza Meteyard and Harriet Ward. Ranging across diverse print formats, from daily newspapers and abolitionist weeklies to the explicitly feminist English Woman’s Journal and the armed-services focussed United Service Magazine, the book showed how women’s serious, high-minded contributions to the Victorian press constituted a crucial aspect of the professionalization of authorship and the expansion of female work in nineteenth century England. Model Women of the Press was the co-winner of the 2025 Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize.

My articles on Victorian women’s foreign correspondence, feminist journalism, and celebrity culture have appeared in Victorian Periodicals Review, Women’s Writing and Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. Chapters on women’s entry into medicine and feminist fiction have appeared in Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s–1900s, edited by Alexis Easley, Clare Gill and Beth Rodgers (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and the Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Another chapter on translation in the Victorian feminist press is forthcoming in the Edinburgh History of the Radical Press, 1780-1914.

I am currently working on a new project on media and the environment in the long nineteenth-century. ‘Encountering Nature in the 19th Century’, a collaborative project with Dr. Tara Puri at Bristol University, UK, draws on this new work. It has been granted a 2025-2026 Research Development International Collaborative Award by the University of Bristol.

I have held a TORCH Women in the Humanities writing fellowship at the University of Oxford, an Andrew W. Mellon fellowship at the Huntington library in California, and have served on the Board of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP). My research on imperial periodicals was awarded a Curran fellowship by the RSVP.

Nineteenth-century British literature and culture

Periodical Studies and Media History

Women’s Writing and Professionalization of Authorship

Gender and Sexuality; Histories of Feminism

Reform Writing and Fiction

Imperial Print Networks

Literature and the Environment

* I welcome doctoral students in any of the above areas and related subfields. I am currently supervising a doctoral thesis on representations of death and mourning in nineteenth-century literature.

DPhil in English, University of Oxford

MPhil in English, Delhi University

MA in English, Delhi University

BA (Honours) in English, Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University

2017–Present, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence.

  • ‘Encountering Nature in the 19th Century’, a collaborative project With Dr. Tara Puri (University of Bristol) granted a Research Development International Collaborative Award by the University of Bristol (2025-2026)
  • My monograph, Model Women of the Press: Gender, Politics, and Women’s Professional Journalism(Routledge: New York, 2024) was the co-winner of 2025 Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize, awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
  • Curran Fellowship awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals for research on nineteenth-century imperial periodicals (2017)
  • TORCH Women in the Humanities writing fellowship at the University of Oxford, UK (January–April 2017)
  • Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Huntington Library in California, United States (May–June 2017)
  • (2012–2015) Felix Scholarship for a D.Phil in English Literature, University of Oxford (2012-2015)
  • Continuation Charge Bursary from the English Department for the tenth term of the doctorate (November 2015)
  • BAVS (British Association for Victorian Studies) conference bursary (2014)
  • Wolfson College, Oxford, Travel Grant for Archival Research at Girton College, Cambridge (February 2013)
  • Wolfson College, Oxford, Conference Grants, awarded multiple times (July 2013, July 2014, November 2014)
  • The English Department's Maxwell and Meyerstein travel grants, awarded twice (August 2014, April 2015)

Served on the Board of Directors of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (2021–2023)

Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

British Association for Victorian Studies

  • ‘Going Places: Harriet Martineau’s “Letters from Ireland” and the Rise of the Female Foreign Correspondent’, Women’s Writing, 24.2 (2017), 207–226
  • ‘Crossing the Final Frontier: Harriet Ward as Mid-Victorian War Correspondent’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 49.2 (Summer 2016), 305–332
  • ‘Novel Networks: The “Specialité” of the English Woman’s Journal’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 47.4 (Winter 2014), 597–612

Books:

Model Women of the Press: Gender, Politics, and Women’s Professional Journalism, 1850-1880 (New York: Routledge, 2024).

Book Chapters:

  • ‘In the Advanced Guard of Victorian Literary Feminism: The Actress as an Independent Woman and Social Reformer in Eliza Lynn Linton's Realities: A Tale(1851)', Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023), pp.380­–392
  • ‘Claiming Medicine as a Profession for Women: The English Woman’s Journal’s Campaign for Female Doctors’, in Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s–1900s, edited by Alexis Easley, Clare Gill and Beth Rodgers (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp.120–139

*This collection was given an honourable mention by the 2020 Colby Prize Committee https://rs4vp.org/awards/colby-prize/#awardees

  • (January 2026), ‘Writer as Gold Digger: Authorship, Extraction and Empire in George Meredith’s Diana of the Crossways’, at ‘Transnational Encounters in/through South Asia: Victorian Routes of Influence and Affect’, Victorian Diversities Research Network Symposium at Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
  • (June 2025), ‘Ecological Visions in the Victorian Press: The Media Campaign to Save Hampstead Heath’, Preconference Digital Panel for the 2025 RSVP Conference in Chicago, USA
  • (March 2025), ‘Making the Most of Margins: Harriet Ward’s reportage on the Seventh Frontier War in the United Service Magazine’, Invited talk at ‘Perspectives: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Studies in India’, a National Symposium hosted by the University of Hyderabad
  • (October 2024), ‘Entitling the Woman Writer: The 1842 Copyright Act and The Female Journalist in Eliza Meteyard’s Struggles for Fame (1845)’, talk part of the Periodicals and Law seminar series hosted by the European Society for Periodicals Research
  • (June 2024), ‘In the Open: Eliza Meteyard, Disability, and Public Spaces’, at ‘Place in the Victorian Press’, Annual Conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, University of Stirling, Scotland, UK
  • (September 2023), ‘Professing Womanpower: Frances Power Cobbe in Macmillan’s Magazine’, at ‘Feminism(s) In the Media: Public Outreach and Cultural Transformations’ conference, Ghent University, Belgium (online)
  • (July 2023), ‘Currents and Crosscurrents in the Abolitionist Press: Harriet Martineau’s Correspondence for New York’s National Anti-Slavery Standard’ at ‘Currents in the Periodical Press’, Annual Conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, University of Caen, Normandy, France
  • (May 2023), ‘On Wanting to Change: Women, Work, and Transformation in Charlotte Yonge’s The Clever Woman of the Family’ at ‘Victorian Transformations’ Conference, Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies in collaboration with the Charlotte M. Yonge Fellowship (hybrid)
  • (September 2022), ‘Making the Most of Margins: War in the Outposts of Empire in the United Service Magazine’, Margin/Limit/Periphery/Edge, Annual International Conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (online)
  • (December 2021) Invited participant in a discussion on the pandemic-themed film, Contagion Cabaret, made by the Diseases of Modern Life Project at the University of Oxford and Chipping Norton Theatre, UK. The event was hosted by Science Gallery Bengaluru. Discussants included Professor Sally Shuttleworth, University of Oxford, Dr. Gangandeep Kang, Professor Raghavendra Gadagkar
  • (January 2021) Invited participant in a panel discussion on ‘Archives and Afterlives: Literary Studies Now’ hosted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi
  • (February 2018), ‘Victorian Woman in the Warfield: Harriet Ward’s Reportage of the Seventh Frontier War (1844–47)’, at ‘Nineteenth-Century Synergies: Ventures at Home and (Ad)Ventures Abroad International’ Conference, Presidency University, Kolkata, India
  • (June 2017) ‘Reform as Sustenance: Working Women and Middle-Class Culture in the English Woman’s Journal’, at Annual British Women Writers Conference, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
  • (May 2017) ‘Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Periodical Press: Harriet Martineau’s Correspondence for New York’s National Anti-Slavery Standard’, at ‘Summoning the Archive: A Symposium on the Periodical, Printed Matter, and Digital Archiving’, New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge, New York, USA
  • (September 2016) ‘Writing in Transit: Harriet Martineau’s Itinerant Reportage of Post-Famine Ireland’ at ‘Consuming (the) Victorians’, Annual Conference of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS), University of Cardiff, UK
  • (October 2015) ‘Living on The Edge: Harriet Ward and the Construction of Militaristic Wifehood on the Eastern Cape Frontier, 1844–47’ at ‘Imperial Identities: Intersections and Transformations’ Workshop, History Faculty, University of Oxford, UK
  • (June 2015) ‘Female Foreign Correspondence and the Signs of Colonial Modernity: Harriet Martineau’s “Letters from Ireland”’, ‘Victorian Modernities’ Conference, University of Kent, UK
  • (April 2015) ‘“Bonâ fide” Communications: Woman Writer as Facilitator of Female Colonial Emigration in the Mid-Century Press’ at ‘Networks of Media and Print in the Age of Imperialism’ Conference, University of Warwick, UK
  • (November 2014) ‘Harriet Martineau’s War Correspondence’ at ‘War, Travel, Travel Writing’ Conference, University of East Anglia, UK
  • (September 2014) ‘In the Name of Sustenance: Working Women and Middle-Class Culture in the English Woman's Journal’, at ‘Victorian Sustainability’, Annual Conference of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS), University of Kent, UK
  • (July 2014) ‘Making the Most of Gifts: The Woman Writer as a Useful Professional in Charlotte Yonge’s Mid-Century Novels’, at ‘Reassessing Women’s Writing of the 1840s and 1850s’, International Conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK
  • (July 2014) ‘“Letters from Ireland”: Harriet Martineau as Travelling Foreign Correspondent’ at ‘New Horizons’ Conference, the Chawton House Library, UK
  • (June 2014) ‘Colonizing through Correspondence: Harriet Martineau’s “Letters from Ireland”’ at ‘Print Culture and Gender in the British Empire’ Conference, University of Warwick, UK
  • (June 2014) ‘Reporting the Colony: Harriet Martineau’s “Letters from Ireland”’ at Victorian Graduate Seminar, University of Oxford, UK
  • (October 2013) ‘Reporting from the Field: Harriet Martineau as Foreign Correspondent’, at ‘Navigating Networks: Women, Travel and Female Communities’ Conference, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK

  • (2017) Curran Fellowship awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) for research on nineteenth-century imperial periodicals.
  • (January–April 2017) TORCH Women in the Humanities writing fellowship at the University of Oxford, UK.
  • (May–June 2017) Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Huntington Library in California, United States.

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  • (2022) Elected to the Board of Directors of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP). All Directors on the Board are elected to a two-year term.