Personal research and other interests
(The data below, hopefully accurate, provide an initial sample of how people may wish to summarize their interests. Please send your summary statement to Lee Schlesinger.)
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My
main interest in Marathi is to attempt to find video tapes of lavani
dances, translations of lavani song lyrics, and locate people who
can help us create proper lavani dances.
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My
dissertation looks at the rise of a historical imagination and a shift
from using traditional sources of inquiry/debate/critique to modern ones
amongst the native Marathi elite in the nineteenth century. The research
is based on Marathi and English sources, using as many Marathi writings as
possible, especially of Phule, Agarkar, and Chiplunkar, among others.
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| Prachi Deshpande |
My dissertation examines the emergence of modern regional identities in colonial South Asia. The empirical focus of the thesis is on the creation of a modern “Maharashtrian” identity in the Marathi-speaking areas of colonial western India. The primary argument is that this regional consciousness was shaped in the main by a strong sense of pride in history, especially the pre-colonial history of the Maratha state. The thesis examines the production of narratives on “Maratha history” over the colonial and early post-colonial period in Maharashtra and argues that they were more than a “tool” for a nationalist history. They also provided an important site for social, cultural and moral debates over modernity and the impact of colonialism on Maharashtrian society and culture. Equally importantly, these historical narratives enabled the articulation of the relationship between the Maharashtrian region and the modern Indian nation.
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Engblom's
primary field of research is modern Marathi Literature. His dissertation
was a study of the process whereby the sonnet was indigenized as a Marathi
form of poetry, and he has continued to explore the question of what
constitutes the adhunik (modern) in Marathi poetry. Indian writing
in English (notably Nissim Ezekiel and Salman Rushdie) has also been a
focus of his work, especially the way in which it intersects with the
writing of the Anglo-Marathi writers of Mumbai. He has translated the work
of Pandita Ramabai, Dilip Chitre, P.S. Rege, Kamal Desai, Gauri Deshpande,
and D.B. Mokashi. In recent work he examines Arun Kolatkar's celebrated
English poems in Jejuri in the light of his collected Marathi poems.
Engblom is a member of the team of Marathi teachers that created the
first-year textbook, Marathi in Context, currently available from
the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, with accompanying audio tapes
shortly forthcoming through the University of Chicago Language Lab.
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| Marcia Frost | My research interests focus on rural economic
change over the past two centuries.
My first project was as an undergraduate with the Associated Colleges
of the Midwest in which I examined the (then new) community development program in a village (then) an hour's ST ride from
Pune. I was particularly interested in examining the BDO's assertion that
the villagers' unwillingness
to adopt new hybrid seeds was due to their ignorance
and backwardness. Not
surprisingly, I found that they were neither
ignorant nor backward. They
were making very rational decisions based
on the necessity of an assured water supply for a profitable hybrid crop
and the government's prohibition against their storage and use of water
flowing across their lands. My
doctoral research examined population and
agrarian change in Kheda district, Gujarat during the half century of East
India Company administration. My
current research project attempts to understand
peasant responses to scarcity, and I am currently examining price
responsiveness and convergence across Bombay Presidency during the mid
1820s when both supply and demand conditions changed radically during a year
of drought and extreme scarcity.
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Lanaghan
is doing doctoral research on pilgrimage traditions relating to Kolhapur’s
Mahalakshmi. She is translating the Karavira Mahatmya along with modern
pamphlets and plans to conduct research in Maharashtra in 2003-04,
focusing on the relationship of Mahalakshmi to Tuljabhavani. She is
particularly interested in the attitudes of the Chhatrapati family to
Mahalakshmi and Tuljabhavani as they established their new capital city.
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| Jayant Lele | Lele is Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Political Studies and Sociology, Queen's University at Kingston in Canada and teaches Critical Social Theory, Comparative Politics of Developing Societies and Political Sociology.
He was also the founder coordinator of the Medial Programme of Development Studies at Queen's University and teaches courses on Development and Democracy.
He is currently working on a joint research project on colonial and post-colonial analyses of image worship in
India. His other research interests include studies of rural and national politics in India and of party politics in Canada, evaluation of public policy processes and community-based programmes, critical reinterpretation of the modernity of tradition as well as the political economy of India, Southeast Asia, and Canada. He is the author, coauthor or editor of a number of articles and books including,
Tradition and Modernity in Bhakti Movements, Elite Pluralism and Class
Rule, Language and Society, State and Society in India, Explorations in Indian
Sociolinguistics, Hindutva: The Emergence of the Right, Unravelling the Asian Miracle, Asia: Who Pays for Growth?, Globalization and Civil Society in Asia and Democratic Transitions and Social Movements in Asia (Palgrave 2004).
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| Laurie Hovell McMillan | She
teaches rhetoric and composition at Oberlin College and has published
translations and several articles on Namdeo Dhasal. Link
to publication details.
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| Christian Lee Novetzke | I
am interested in history, historiography, and religion; in the ways these
things are practiced together; and the ways that the latter has been
excluded from the former two by various dominant knowledge systems in
South Asia and by the fortunes of political economy. In my work I propose
that several kinds of performance traditions, which are largely
oral/dramatic ones, have maintained a historiography that remains
unrecognized as such by the Euro-American and South Asian academics. I
suggest that the problem lies with certain decisions that have been made
about literacy and orality, and especially about the function and meaning
of religious practice. I work mainly in two Indian languages: Hindi and
Marathi. For CV and additional information, see my personal web-site.
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| Shreeyash Palshikar | Shreeyash Palshikar is a doctoral candidate in
the South Asian Languages and Cultures program at The University of
Chicago. He is working on a dissertation addressing
the Samyukta Maharashtra movement. He is focusing on the uses of media in Indian politics, the relationship between regional
and national identity, and the issue of linguistic-regional politics. His other main area of
interest is South Asian performing arts with a particular focus on magic and juggling which was the subject of his PhD qualifying paper. Along with his scholarly activities, he is a professional entertainer who works as actor, magician, juggler, public speaker. He is a founding member of Raasa Chicago and Tea Co, a consultant on South Asian issues to Apple Tree theater and a scholar of Indian magic who has spoked widely on this topic all around the world. More information at: www.palshikar.com
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My
principle focus is on Maharajas, Rajas, and Nawabs of India, and my other
interests are the Africans and Jews (Bene Israel) of India.
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My
research concentrates on the social structure of Maharashtrian villages,
and my ethnographic field work has been in Satara District. My
dissertation depicts the use by villagers of verbal forms that designate
social groupings (lineages, clans, factions, castes, and multi-caste
forms). I am also interested in agricultural practices and economic life,
domestic and community spatial patterns, and Marathi gramin sahitya.
Some recent papers have focused on a village temple, faith, and bhakti
and on how village life and villagers are linked to cities and other
places far from home.
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My
broad research interests are colonial studies, political economy and
feminist political theory. My dissertation research (PhD 2001) focused on
the regulation of prostitution in colonial Bombay city, 1860-1949. I'm
currently expanding on ideas which emerged from that research, including
the zoning of a red light area in Bombay, and the experience of foreign
brothel workers in the city.
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| Hugh van Skyhawk |
Van Skyhawk’s research in Maharashtra began in 1978 (in the company of Professor Günther-Dietz Sontheimer) at the temple of Khandoba at Jejuri. He then studied modern and old Marathi, including extensive work in bhakti literature, especially Eknath. Subsequent research has covered interactions in the cults and literature of Hindu-Muslim saints, the Muslim contribution to Marathi religious literature, the transition from the Peshwa-shahi to English rule, a comparison of writings of G. H. Deshmukh and V. D. Savarkar, studies of contemporary Hindu-Muslim saints, and an account of the cult of Kaniphnath/Kanhoba (not Khandoba)/Shah Ramzan of Madhi (Ahmadnagar) and its relation to the Paithan Eknathsasti. Since 1990, van Skyhawk has shifted his research focus to Karakoram, more specifically, to the Burushos of Hunza and Nager and their mysterious language, Burushaski. His interest in the changes imposed upon the culture of the Burusho and their language led to investigations of songs of social criticism in Burushaski and socially critical radio-plays in the Burushaski programme of Radio Pakistan (Gilgit). He has also recently published a monograph on the language and culture of the people of Hispar (Nager, Karakoram). He adds, “At present, I have no definite plans for returning to Maharashtra. But, as the Dalai Lamai has often said: ‘Things can change just like that’ (i.e. as fast as the snap of the fingers).”
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