I am currently writing parts of my next major project, examining
communities, clans, and families as sites to better understand notions of
belonging. For this research, I have
turned to Kumaon, the small region in the hills of north India. Using a variety
of traditional archival data as well as family papers, genealogies, photographs
and oral narratives, I hope to produce a second monograph in the not too
distant future!
Courses taught
- Historiography and Methodologies (Graduate Seminar)
- Worlding the Middle Class: Readings in World History (Graduate Seminar)
- Readings in Colonialism and Nationalism (Graduate Seminar)
- Subaltern Subjects and Postcolonial Histories (Graduate Seminar)
- Religion Politics and Power in the Modern World (both as a Graduate and Undergraduate Seminar)
- Film and Partition (Capstone Seminar)
- Pre-Modern India
- The Making of Modern Asia
- Gandhi's India
- Contemporary India
- History of South Asia Through Film
Teaching areas
Other than courses on
modern Asian history and histories of India, my teaching interests include
studies of comparative colonialism and nationalism, the place of religion in
the modern world, postcolonial theory and the writing of history, and other
themes relating to modernity and its “others.”
Recent academic awards
- Northern Arizona University Faculty Research Grants, 2006, 2008-09, and 2012.
- Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship.
Department of Education, 2004.
- Senior Research Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies, Chicago.
(Awarded NEH funds for “superior scholars/Indologists in the humanities”),
2003.
- Senior Short-term Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies, Chicago,
2000. Organized Research Grant, Northern Arizona University. 2006, 2000, 1999
and 1997.
Sample of recent and
forthcoming publications
The Middle Class in Colonial India, ed. with Introduction by S.
Joshi (Oxford: Delhi, India, 2010) Second and third hardback impressions 2010,
2011.
“Thinking About Modernity From
the Margins: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial India.” In, Abel Ricardo
López and Barbara Weinstein ed.s “We Shall Be All”: A Transnational History
of the Middle Class. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
“The Specter of Comparisons: Studying the Middle Class of Colonial
India.” In, Amita Baviskar and Raka Ray eds. Both Elite and Everyman: The
Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes. Delhi: Routledge, 2011.
“Contesting Histories and Nationalist Geographies : A Comparison of
School Textbooks in India and Pakistan.” South Asian History and Culture 1, 3
(July 2010): 357–377.
“Virtually There: Cricket, Community, and Commerce on the Internet.”
International Journal of the History of Sport 24, 9 (September 2007): 1225 –
1240. Also republished in Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, Shantanu Chakrabarti,
Kingshuk Chatterjee ed.s. The Politics of Sport in South Asia, by J. A Mangan,
Boria Majumdar, Mark Dyreson. New York: Routledge: 2009.
Fractured Modernity: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North
India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Second hardback impression, 2002,
paperback edition, 2005.
“Re-Publicizing Religiosity: Modernity, Religion and the Middle Class.”
In Derek Peterson and Darren Walhof eds. The Invention of Religion: Rethinking
Belief and Politics in History. Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp.
79-99.
Sample of book reviews
Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of Modern India. Jayeeta
Sharma. Social History (forthcoming).
The Making of Awadh Culture, Madhu Trivedi. The Book Review (India),
XXXV, 3 (March, 2011): 82.
Middle Class Values in Indian and Western Europe, Imtiaz Ahmad
and Helmut Reifeld eds. Contributions to Indian Sociology 43, 2 (June,
2009): 327-29.
Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism,
Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class, Keith David Watenpaugh. Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 29, 2 (2009): 334-36.
Men, Women and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in
Colonial Bengal. Swapna M. Banerjee. Journal of Asian Studies 66, 2
(May 2007): 564-566.
Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947, Sumit Ganguly.
The Historian, 67, 02 (2005), pp. 341-42.
Subaltern Studies Vol. XI : Community, Gender, and Violence, edited
Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan.” Journal of Asian Studies, 62, 4
(November 2003), pp. 1273-74.
Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in
Colonial Punjab, Anshu Malhotra. H-Asia, (September 2003).
Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Nicholas B.
Dirks. American Historical Review, 108, 1 (February 2003), p. 180.
Sample of conference papers
Aap Kaun Hue? Or What it Means to Belong: Studying
Community in early twentieth-century colonial Kumaon. Invited presentation
at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Seminar, New Delhi, India. July 12,
2012.
What Makes a Community?
Emotions, Expediency and the Politics around Overseas Travel in early Twentieth
Century Kumaon (north India). Invited presentation at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development,
Program in History of Emotions, Berlin, Germany. July 12, 2011.
Juliet Got it Wrong: Naming
and the complications of identity among Christian converts in Kumaon, ca.
1850-1930. Paper presented
at the World Christianity Conference, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,
India. February 2-4, 2011.
“Free to Wander”: Some
Questions, Predicaments and Possibilities about Family Histories and Domestic
Archives. Invited presentation at University of Michigan, South Asia
Center. March 20, 2009.
Familiarizing History:
Writing About the History of the Family in Colonial India. Paper presented at the Twentieth Meeting of
the International Association of Historians of Asia, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, India. November 14-17, 2008.
The Specter of Comparisons:
Studying the Middle Class of Colonial India. Invited presentation at “The Middle Classes in India: Economy,
Identity and the Public Sphere.” Institute of Economic Growth, University
of Delhi, Delhi, India. March 15-17, 2007.
Beyond A Hyper-Real Europe? The Issue of Comparisons in Studying the
Middle Class of Colonial India. Paper presented at the Nineteenth European Conference
on Modern South Asian Studies, Leiden, the Netherlands, June 27-30, 2006.
Recent professional and
public service
- Vice President, American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), 2012-13.
- Executive Committee, AIIS, 2011-13 (also 2003-06)
- Selection Committee, AIIS,
2011-14 (also 2004-05)
- National Screening Committee (India), Junior Fulbright-Hays Program
2011
- Founding President, South Asian Caucus, American Historical
Association 2007-08 (now the “Society for Advancing the History of South Asia” [SAHSA])
- Executive Committee, Society for Advancing the History of South Asia
2008-09
- Manuscript Review, Journal of Asian Studies, Cultural Anthropology.
- External reviewer, promotion and tenure, Carleton College, Dartmouth
College.