Full Description
During the past two decades, at the same time that the South Asian presence in the U.S. and Europe has become an increasingly visible part of mainstream social life and popular culture, scholars of South Asian descent have come to occupy many prominent positions within the Western academy, contributing to the development of disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. In this collection of highly personal essays, leading figures in anthropology, history, and cultural and literary studies reflect on the complex interplay between individual and collective trajectories, examining their own experiences as students, scholars, and teachers. Their narratives trace the arc of interactions between East and West from the late colonial period, through Indian Independence, the Cold War, the radicalism of the 1960s, and the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies, to the current conjuncture. Throughout, these writers explore the past and future significance of area studies as a paradigm for education and scholarship.
Contributors are Shahid Amin, Arjun Appadurai, Urvashi Butalia, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee, Vasudha Dalmia, Prasenjit Duara, Ramachandra Guha, Akhil Gupta, Sudipta Kaviraj, Purnima Mankekar, Gyan Prakash, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam.
Contents
Preliminary Table of Contents:
At home in the diaspora: South Asia, Europe, the United States Jackie Assayag and Véronique Bénéï
1. Knowledge, circulation and collective biography Arjun Appadurai
2. My place in the global republic of letters Partha Chatterjee
3. Off-center: Feminism and South Asian studies in the diaspora Purnima Mankekar
4. Crossing borders and boundaries Vasudha Dalmia
5. Representing rural India Akhil Gupta
6. De-ghettoizing the histories of the non-West Shahid Amin
7. Journey to the East, by the West Prasenjit Duara
8. The location of scholarship Gyan Prakash
9. Globalisation, democratization, and the evacuation of history? Dipesh Chakrabarty
10. On the advantages of being a Barbarian Sudipta Kaviraj
11. The ones who stayed behind Ramachandra Guha
12. My brothers' keeper Sanjay Subrahmanyam
13. Recasting women in the publishing world Urvashi Butalia
Contributors:
Shahid Amin is Professor of History at the University of Delhi.
Arjun Appadurai is William K Lanman, Jr. Professor of International Studies and Anthropology at Yale University.
Urvashi Butalia is an independent writer and a publisher, Kali for Women, New Delhi.
Dipesh Chakrabarty is Professor of South Asian Studies and History at the University of Chicago.
Partha Chatterjee is Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.
Vasudha Dalmia is Professor of Hindi Literature and South Asian Studies at California University, Berkeley.
Prasenjit Duara is Professor of History and Chinese Studies at the University of Chicago.
Ramachandra Guha is an independent writer and Visiting Professor in several universities.
Akhil Gupta is Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University.
Sudipta Kaviraj is Professor of Political Sciences at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
Purnima Mankekar is Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University.
Gyan Prakash is Professor of History at Princeton University.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Directeur d'études (Research Professor) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and Professor of Indian History and Culture at Oxford University.
