Beyond Disciplines: India Studies in the United States

Abstract

Notes

Portions of this essay draw from earlier historical research I have conducted on higher education policy and South Asian studies in the US.

1. For excellent overviews of the field of “area studies” with an emphasis on the South Asian region, see Arjun Appadurai, “Area Studies, Regional Worlds: A White Paper for the Ford Foundation” (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1997); Nicholas B. Dirks, “South Asian Studies: Futures Past,” in David L. Szanton, ed., The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines. University of California Press/University of California International and Area Studies Digital Collection, Edited Volume #3, 2003. Via http://www.repositories.cdlib.org/uciaspubs/editedvolumes/3/9.

2. See Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). Because his writing on language and race have come to frame the way the contemporary West views language and polity, see also Johann Gottfried Herder, “Ideas toward a Philosophy of History,” in Marcia J. Bunge, ed., Against Pure Reason: Writings on Religion, Language, and History, Fortress Texts in Modern Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993 [1784–91]).

3. For a short biographical sketch, see William Crawley, “Sir William Jones: A Vision of Orientalism,” Asian Affairs Vol. 27, No. 2 (1996), pp. 163–176.

4. Richard Davis, “South Asia at Chicago: A History” (Chicago: Committee on Southern Asian Studies, The University of Chicago, 1985), p. 3.

5. Indeed, we can make the same argument for many Asian traditions, most obviously Chinese.

6. See Davis, “South Asia at Chicago: A History.” See also the notes from the University of Chicago Library commemorative exhibition, “South Asia at Chicago: Fifty Years of Scholarship.” Available via http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/southasia/50yrs1.html.

7. Again, for more on this see Alyssa Ayres, “Disconnected Networks: Notes toward a Different Approach to Filling the South Asia Expert Gap,” India Review Vol. 2, No. 2 (2003), pp. 69–96.

8. Davis, “South Asia at Chicago: A History,” p. 22.

9. Jackson Janes, Priming the Pump: The Making of Foreign Area Specialists, IIE Research Report, No. 23 (New York: Institute of International Education, 1991), p. 1. It is impossible to break out dollar figures for India/South Asia alone.

10. The University of Chicago Library, “South Asia at Chicago: Fifty Years of Scholarship.”

11. A notable publication which resulted from the Shils project was Edward Shils, The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1961).

12. For more on the creation of the AIIS, see Joseph W. Elder, Edward Dimock, and Ainslee T. Embree, India's Worlds and US Scholars (Delhi: Manohar and AIIS, 1998). On Brown, see the introduction as well as the collected essays in Rosane Rocher, ed., India and Indology: Selected Articles by W. Norman Brown (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas and AIIS, 1978).

13. The South Asia National Resource Center awards for fiscal years 2006–08 had not been announced at the time of this writing.

14. See Jeffrey Brainard, “Survey of Doctoral Programs Needs Major Changes, Panel Suggests,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2003.

15. This survey is conducted by the Modern Language Association and the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages on behalf of the US Department of Education, and is paid for by an appropriation from the Title VI funds. Thus these quadrennial surveys are generally considered the best available assessment of foreign language study in the US.

16 I do not know, nor does the data source explicate, whether dollar values provided were adjusted to a single-year equivalence. See Table 5 in Hadley Read, Partners With India: Building Agricultural Universities (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois, 1974), p.151. Also available on ERIC microfiche via #ED100210.

17. See Read, Partners With India, Preface (unnumbered).

18. Two private foundations, both linked to the American International Group, are filling in the philanthropy gap on India that grew after Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie revisited their program guidelines. The Starr Foundation and the Freeman Foundation, both of which have endowments generated from stock in AIG, have emerged as major supporters of India (and China) studies in US universities, endowing chairs and fellowships and also providing project-based term support. (Freeman is less interested in India, and much more interested in K-12 education, but has supported broader Asian studies programs in US universities; Starr has made some major endowment gifts to build India studies capacity at several US universities: the New School and Johns Hopkins SAIS, most recently). While it is too soon to compare the impact of Starr and Freeman on university agendas with that of the big three—which unfolded over decades—one obvious point of difference is that the philanthropic interests of the former are more closely tied to the personal interests of the foundations' chairmen. A different sort of essay could explore the impact of small but highly capitalized private foundations and their role in shaping India studies.

19. See Robert H. Bates, “Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversy?,” PS: Political Science and Politics Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 1997), pp. 166–9; Chalmers Johnson, “Preconception Versus Observation, or the Contributions of Rational Choice Theory and Area Studies to Contemporary Political Science,” PS: Political Science and Politics Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 1997), pp. 170–74.

20. Best illustrated by Masao Miyoshi and Harry Hartoonian, eds., Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).

21. For a good and concise overview, see Louis Menand, “Undisciplined,” Wilson Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 4 (2001), pp. 51–59.

22. See Alok Rai, “Representing India: Indian Literature on the World Stage,” in Alyssa Ayres and Philip K. Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing: Quickening the Pace of Change (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), pp. 197–228.

23. Haruo Shirane, “Attraction and Isolation: The Past and Future of East Asian Languages and Cultures,” in ADFL Bulletin Vol. 34, No. 2 (Winter 2003), pp. 15–19.

24. The MLA Guide is a database which resides on the Modern Language Association's website. Its value here lies in the comparative data on departments/programs of study on modern languages. Via http://www.mla.org/gdp_search.

25. C. K. Prahlad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing, 2005).

26. See Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, “Dreaming With BRICs: The Path to 2050,” Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 99, October 2003.

27. Katherine S. Mangan, “This Political Hot Potato Is a Course in Demand,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 14, 2004.