kriticulture

By John L. Jackson Jr. (Courtesy: The Chronicle Review ) My one-year-old and I spent the bulk of this week down at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, sitting in on both a dissertation defense and a dissertation proposal defense. It was a wonderful way to spend three days. I always tell people that my favorite moment as a Columbia graduate student had to be during the two hours (maybe it was only an hour and a half) that I spent discussing/defending my dissertation proposal with a dissertation committee that included faculty members from Columbia and NYU, the Department of Anthropology and Columbia Law. They were critical and encouraging. They cautioned me against methodological missteps and challenged me to think more ambitiously about my intellectual endgame. I appreciated them taking the time to really engage my work, and the session gave me the nerve I needed to strike out for “the field” and begin my ethnographic research. But the other side of that dissertational experienc...

Aarttee Kaul Dhar To quote S Vivekananda, “The Ramayana and Mahabharata are the two encyclopedias of the ancient Aryan life and wisdom portraying an ideal civilization which humanity has yet to aspire after.” Tracing Indian philosophical and literary history is an interesting exercise as it reveals records of religious and philosophical developments all striving towards ‘samanvaya’ which is synthesis, reconciliation and concord. Cultural patterns different environments diverse racial contributions and numerous local and historical traditions must have though influenced the Indian culture and philosophy they could not but affect its continuity during six thousand years or more. It would be impatient on my part to just talk of the epics without mentioning the itihasas, puranas, dharmas and other shastras significant in their own way providing necessary base and background to the whole picture in this humble tour-de-force. It is a huge topic but this is just a glimps...