• Email Address: vneelakanta@rider.edu
• Phone: 609-895-5581
• Office: Fine Arts 331
• Mailing Address: 2083 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648

Degrees: B.A., M.A. Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India; Ph.D. Brandeis University, Mass.

Vanita Neelakanta’s principal research and teaching areas are seventeenth century British literature and culture, with a special emphasis on Milton; Renaissance and Restoration drama; early modern religious poetry; and Reformation theology. Her interest in performance and spectatorship, and surveillance and visual culture, extends well into the twentieth century and includes film noir, detective fiction, and contemporary science fiction. Dr. Neelakanta teaches the seminar in Milton, Shakespeare and seventeenth-century literature surveys, expository writing, and the Great Ideas course, among others.