Sumit Guha

Professor of History

Ph.D., University of Cambridge, 1981

M.A., Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 1976

B.A. (Hons.), St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi 1974

At Rutgers Since 2004

005 Van Dyck Hall
848-932-8534
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RESEARCH INTERESTS

I am increasingly interested in the political, cultural and linguistic processes by which identities take historical shape. My primary research area is western and central India. In 2008 I was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for research in this area and am currently working on a book provisionally titled "Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia c.1500-2000". Some of my recent work is listed below.

I have also just edited a recent Special Issue (vol. 14, no. 2) of the Medieval History Journal organized on the theme of literary cultures of frontier zones, extending from sixteenth century Mexico through the Mediterranean to eastern Burma. In Spring 2013 I shall visit the Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris as Directeur d’Etudes and deliver four public lectures in that capacity.  I am also one of the participants in project led by Professor Benjamin Ellman and Professor Sheldon Pollock that aims to write a comparative history of India and China in the early modern era.

COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT

UNDERGRADUATE

• 508:230 South Asian History: 600 BCE to 1950 CE
• 508:231 South Asian Civilization: The first five millennia
• 508:335 Modern South Asia c. 1800-1950
• 508:336 Contemporary South Asia 1947-2002
• 506:402 History Seminar: War of Independence or Sepoy Mutiny? The 1857 uprising in India

GRADUATE

• 510:520 South Asia in Global History

PUBLICATIONS

• “Conviviality, recognition and representation: ‘the West’ at the Maratha courts c.1670-1850” in Purushartha no. 33 (2014) Special issue edited by Corinne Lefebvre, Ines G. Zupanov and Jorge Flores
• “Property rights, social structure and rural society in comparative perspective: evidence from historic South Asia” in The International Journal of South Asian Studies vol. 5 (2013)
• ‘Bad Language and Good Language: Lexical awareness in the cultural politics of Peninsular India, c.1300-1800’ in Sheldon Pollock ed. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern South Asia Raleigh: Duke University Press, 2011 pp.49-68
• ‘Serving the Barbarian to save the dharma: Ideology and training of a clerical elite in Southern India c.1300-1800’ Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 47,(4) Special issue (2010), 497-525
• ‘The Frontiers of Memory: What the Marathas remembered of Vijayanagara’ Modern Asian Studies, 43, 1 (2009), 269-288
• ‘Margi, Desi and Yavani: High language and ethnic speech in Maharashtra’ in H. Kotani ed. Marga: Ways to Liberation, Empowerment, and Social Change in Maharashtra Delhi: Manohar Publishers 2008, pp. 129-146
• ‘Genetic change and colonial cotton improvement in 19th and 20th century India’ in Ranjan Chakrabarti ed. Situating Environmental History Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2007, pp.307-322
• ‘Speaking Historically: The changing voices of historical narration in Western India, 1400-1900’ American Historical Review, 109, 4 (October 2004 ), 1084-1103
• ‘Literary Tropes and Historical Settings: A study from Southern India’ in Rajat Datta ed. Rethinking a Millennium: India from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Centuries Delhi: Aakar Books 2008  pp.106-120
• ‘Transitions and Translations: Regional Power and Vernacular Identity in the Dakhan, c.1500-1800’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 24, 2 (2004), 23-31
• ‘The Family Feud as a Political Resource in 18th Century India’ in Indrani Chatterjee ed. Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia, New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2004, pp.73-96
• ‘Civilisations, Markets and Services: Village Servants in India from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 41,1 (2004) 73-94

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

• Member, Editorial Board, India Review
• Member, Advisory Board, Medieval History Journal
• Review editor, H-ASIA (www.H-NET.msu.edu)
• Association for Asian Studies
• American Historical Association