South Asian Studies Council Welcomes Visiting Scholars, 2013-2014

In 2013-2014 the South Asian Studies Council will benefit from the presence of several visiting scholars from South Asia: the Dhawan Visiting Professor in South Asian History and  two postdoctoral associates, Asiya Alam and Kedar Kulkarni.  Stan Scott will return as a visiting scholar in Music, and the South Indian drama troupe Napathya will be in residence through the Institute of Sacred Music Fellows Program in Music, Worship, and the Arts.  And, as the recently established Inter-Asia program gets underway at Yale, Rajashree Mazumder will take up the position of postdoctoral associate.

The Council has also appointed two postdoctoral associates in South Asian History and Theatre Studies. Asiya Alam received her PhD in 2013 from the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas, Austin.  Her research focuses on the debates and discussions concerning family and marriage among Muslim communities in colonial north India from the late- nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.  She will teach courses on modern South Asian History and Women and Islam in South Asia. Kedar Kulkarni received his PhD in Spring 2013 from the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.  He specializes in Marathi musical theater of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through which she examines larger themes of nationalism, popular culture, gender and class subjectivies.  He will offer courses on Indian theater and cinema during the last century.

Through the new Inter-Asia program at Yale, funded by the Carnegie Corporation, the South Asian Studies Council is collaborating with the East Asian Studies Council and will host two postdoctoral associates, one of whom is a specialist in South and Southeast Asian Studies.  Rajashree Mazumder received her PHD in History from UCLA earlier this year.  Her research examines Indian immigration to Burma from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. She will teach a course in Fall 2013 on Indian Ocean History.