University of Chicago: Department of Anthropology: About the Department

University of Chicago Anthropologists who work in South & Southeast Asia

Faculty
Students:
     Preparing for the field
     In the field
     Writing up
     Recent PhDs

Faculty:

John Kelly - Fiji; Pune, India (Social theory, capitalism, nation and decolonization, anthropology of knowledge, semiotic technologies)
William Mazzarella - Mumbai/Bombay, India (Cultural politics of globalization, mass media, public culture and publicity, critical theory, affect and aesthetics, post-coloniality)
Alan Kolata (A) -Tiwanaku Valley/Lake Titicaca basin, Bolivia; Moche Valley, Peru; Cambodia (Khmer), Thailand (Archaeology and ethnohistory, preindustrial urbanism, development of agricultural systems, human-environment interactions, anthropology of development)
Kathleen Morrison (A) - Kamalapuram, Karnataka, India; O’ahu & Kaua’i, Hawaii; Paa-ko, New Mexico (Archaeology, archaeological method and theory, historical anthropology, agricultural organization and change, colonialism and imperialism, landscape history, regional analysis, intensification, archaeobotanical analysis, geoarchaeology)
Paul Friedrich - Mexico (Tarascan linguistics); Kerala, India; Germany
McKim Marriott - India (Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra)
Ralph Nicholas - West Bengal, India

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Students:

Preparing for the Field

Nitya Deepa Das - Kerala, India (Legal anthropology, religion, forms of personhood; "Legislating Hinduism: Temple Access and Religious Reform in Contemporary Kerala")
Sean Dowdy - India (Indebtedness and Indian debt collection firms, moral economy, fictive capital, colonial lawgiving, caste, exchange and value theory; "Hindu Political Economy and the Accumulation of Finance Captial: An Historical Anthropology and Moral Economy of the 'Untimely Money-Lender' in Contemporary India")
Julie Hanlon (A) - Tamil Nadu and the Indian Ocean Rim (Underwater archaeology, archaeological survey; economic anthropology, mobility, exchange, urbanization; Underwater archaeology of coastal sites in Tamil Nadu -- trade with Greece, Rome, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia)
Kristyn Hara (A) - Cambodia (Environmental archaeology, archaeobotany; Human-environment dynamics within the Angkor region of Cambodia)
Shefali Jha - South India/Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh (Secularism and its relationship with caste politics and minority religious identity)
Yongjin Kim - Southeast Asia, Malaysia/Indonesia, Bali (Culture and tourism, "objectification" of culture, museums and the politics of display; ethnicity and nationalism; bureaucracy and state-driven development projects; "Culture, Tourism and the Developmental State in Bali")
Ayesa Mulla - Pakistan (Media)
Adam Sargent - India, Varanasi (Language and political economy, cultures of capitalism; caste, class and alterity; semiotics and materiality of built space; the construction industry in Varanasi; "Building Capitalism: The Cultural Politics of Construction in Varanasi")
Mudit Trivedi (A) - India (Ganga Basin, early complex societies, urbanism, ceramic technology and trade, geoarchaeology, paleoenvironment)
Gabriel Tusinski - East Timor (Semiotic ideologies, materiality, architecture, kinship, nationalism, multilingualism. The political centrality of houses [broadly construed as both physical and symbolic architectural structures] and of networks of descent and alliance based on social relations in East Timor; violence in the form of house burning)
Brian Wilson (A) - India (Historical archaeology, British colonialism, colonial and pre-colonial economies, political ecology, archaeobotanical analysis)

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In the Field

Meredith McGuire - New Delhi, India (Globalization, mass media, public culture, identity; Indian call centers that cater to American clientele; "Good Service, American Service: Making the New Middle Class in Urban India")
Malavika Reddy - Thailand (Thai border areas with Burma and Malaysia; refugees, humanitarianism, visibility, legal recognition; "To See and Be Seen: Refugees and the Politics of Visibility in Thailand)
Matthew Rich - Northeast India/Bangladesh border [Panai Village, Kalaura, Bangladesh]; "Translation of Indigeneity: Communicating Khasi Identity and Alterity in Bangladesh"

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Writing Up

Andrew Bauer (A) - South India; "Socializing Environments and Ecologizing Politics: The Production of Nature and Social Differentiation in IronAge Northern Karnataka"
Nusrat Chowdhury - Dhaka & Phulbari, Bangladesh; "The Phulbari Anti-Mining Movement: Value and Violence in Bangladeshi Democracy"
Maria Garrett de Liévano - Germany/Thailand; "Imported Intimacies: Citizenship, the State and the Labor of Love in Thai Marriage Migration to Germany"
Peter Graif - Kathmandu, Nepal; "How to be understood when you speak: Difference, Intelligibility, and Activism in Deaf Nepal"
Beatrice Jauregui - Lucknow, India; "Shadows of the State, Subalterns of the State: Police and 'Law and Order' in Postcolonial India"
Omar Kutty - Delhi, India; "Purifying Labor: Public Goods and the Politics of Sanitation in Delhi"
Genevieve Lakier - Katmandu, Nepal; "The Spectacle of Politics: Protest, Violence and the Problem of Democracy in Nepal, 1990-2006"
Urmila Nair - Nechung Monastery, Dharamsala, District Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, India (Tibetan community in exile in India); " 'When the Sun's Rays are as Shadows': Religious and Other Utopias - The Nechung Ritual in the Spectacular Politics of Tibetan Exile"
Shankar Ramaswami - Delhi/Faridabad, India; "Souls in Kalyug: Migrant Workers' Lives and Struggles in Contemporary Delhi"
Jenny Springer - Madras & Thanjavur District, Tamilnadu, India (+ Delhi); "Development' and [Rice] Agricultural Practice in South India"

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Recent PhDs

Asad Ahmed – Karachi, Pakistan; “Adjudicating Muslims: Law, Religion and the State in Colonial India and Post-Colonial Pakistan"
Thomas Asher – Mumbai, India / England; “Bombay Dyeing and the Future of Laborers Past: Politics and Social Welfare in the Cotton Mills, 1918--"
Brian Axel - Delhi, India; London & Birmingham, England; “Promise and Threat: A Historical Anthropology of the Sikh Diaspora”
J. Bernard Bate - Western Madurai District, Tamilnadu, India; “Meedaittamil: Oratory and Democratic Practice in Tamilnadu”
Jayson Beaster-Jones - Mumbai, Indore & Bhopal, India; "Selling Music in India: Commodity Genres, Performing Cosmopolitanism, Accounting for Taste"
Piya Chatterjee - North Bengal & Calcutta, India; “Encounters Over Tea: Labor, Gender, and Politics on an Indian Plantation”
Anne Cunningham - Gujarat, India; “Landscapes of India and the Ideology of Antiquity”
Anthony D'Andrea - Ibiza, Spain; Goa; “Global Nomads: Techno and New Age as Transnational Countercultures in Ibiza and Goa”
Malathi DeAlwis - Colombo, Sri Lanka; “Maternalist Politics in Sri Lanka: A Historical Anthropology of Its Conditions of Possibility”
Patrick Eisenlohr (Ling) – Mauritius; “Language Ideology and Imaginations of Indianness in Mauritius”
Tatsuro Fujikura - Salyan District, Western Nepal; “Technologies of Improvement, Locations of Culture: The Work of Development in Western Nepal”
Gautam Ghosh - Calcutta, India & Dhaka, Bangladesh; “Nationality, Temporality, and Agency after the 1947 Partition of Bengal”
Arjun Guneratne - Chitwan, Tarai Region, Nepal; “The Tharus of Chitwan [Nepal]: Ethnicity, Class and the State in Nepal”
Adi Hastings (Jt. Ling.) - Bangalore & Mattur, Central Karnataka, India; “Past Perfect, Future Perfect: Sanskrit Revival and the Hindu Nation in Contemporary India”
Jenny Huberman – Banaras/Varanasi, India; “‘Working’ and ‘Playing’ Banaras ’: A Study of Tourist Encounters, Sentimental Journeys, and the Business of Visitation”
Stephen Hughes - Madras, Tamilnadu, India; “Is There Anyone Out There? Exhibition and the Formation of Silent Film Audiences in South India”
Matthew Hull - Islamabad, Pakistan; “Paper Travails: Bureaucracy, Graphic Artifacts, and the Built Environment in Islamabad, 1959-1998”
Pradeep Jeganathan - Colombo, Sri Lanka; “After A Riot: Anthropological Locations of Violence in an Urban Sri Lankan Community”
Peter Johansen (A) - India (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh); "A Political Economy of Space: Spatial Organization and the Production of an Iron Age Settlement Landscape in Northern Karnataka"
Timo Kaartinen - Banda Ely, Kei Besar, SE Moluccas, Eastern Indonesia; “Songs of Travel, Stories of Place: Tradition, Subjectivity and Otherness in Banda Eli (East Indonesia)”
Mark Koops Elson - Mumbai, India; “Risk Cover: An Ethnography of Life Insurance in Mumbai”
Ritty Lukose - Quilom & Trivandrum, Kerala Province, South India; “Learning Modernity: Youth Culture in Kerala, South India”
Caitrin Lynch - Colombo & Kandy, Sri Lanka; “Manufacturing Sri Lankan Women: The Production of National Identity at Export-Oriented Garment Factories in Sri Lanka”
Diane Mines - Tamilnadu, India; “Making and Remaking the Village: The Pragmatics of Social Life in Rural Tamilnadu”
Rosiland Morris - Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand; “Consuming the Margins: Northern Thai Spirit Mediumship and the Theatrics of Consumption in the Age of later Capitalism”
Vyjayanthi Rao - Jataprolu & Pratakota, Andhra Pradesh, So. India + Hyerabad; “Ruins and Recollections: Reimagining Community and Reorganizing Religious Practice in a Scene of Displacement, Andhra Pradesh, South India”
Laura Ring - Karachi, Pakistan; “(En)Gendering Tension: Anger, Intimacy and Everyday Peace in a Karachi Apartment Building”
Mark Rohe - Northern India (Jammu, Delhi, & Katra Village); “Where the Shakti Flows: The Pilgrimage Cult of Vaishno Devi”
Satnislaus Sandarupa - Toraja & Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi, Indonesia; “The Exemplary Center: Poetics and Politics of the Kingly Death Ritual Performance in Toraja, South Sulawesi, Indonesia”
Susan Seizer - Madras, Madurai, Pudukkottai & numerous villages, Tamilnadu, India; “Dramatic License: Negotiating Stigma On and Off the Tamil Popular Stage”
Aditya Dev Sood (Jt. SouthAsia) - Bangalore & Mysore, Karnataka, India; "The Matha State: Kinship, Asceticism and Institutionality in the Public Life of Karnataka"
Patricia Spyer - Kumul, Aru Archipelago, (SE Moluccas] Eastern Indonesia; “The Memory of Trade: Circulation, Autochthony, and the Past in the Aru Islands (Eastern Indonesia)”
Rupert Stasch - Irian Jaya (West Papua), Indonesia; “Figures of Alterity among Korowai of Irian Jaya: Kinship, Mourning, and Festivity in a Dispersed Society”
Namita Sugandhi (A) - South India; "Between the Patterns of History: Rethinking Mauryan Imperial Interaction in the Southern Deccan"

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