Susan Snow Wadley | |
---|---|
Born | 1943 (age 79–80) [1] |
Nationality | American [1] |
Occupation | Anthropologist |
Board member of | Publications Committee of American Institute of Indian Studies (Chairperson) |
Spouse | Rick Olanoff |
Parent | Ellen (mother) [2] |
Academic background | |
Education | Doctor of Philosophy |
Alma mater | Carlton College (B.A.) University of Chicago (M.A. and Ph.D.) |
Thesis | Shakti: Power in the Conceptual Structure of Karimpur Religion (1973) |
Academic advisors | McKim Marriott Milton Singer (Initial research advisors) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Anthropology |
Institutions | Former director,South Asia Center of the Syracuse University |
Main interests | South Asia,specially India [3] |
Susan Snow Wadley (born 1943) is an American anthropologist.
Born in 1943,she completed her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1967 and 1973,respectively. She has worked at the Syracuse University as a professor of South Asian Studies and the former director of its South Asia Center. She has carried out numerous field studies in India for nearly 6 decades with financial support from various entities from the United States.
Wadley did her B.A. from the Carlton College in the field of psychology. [2] She did her M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1967 with the thesis titled "'Fate' and the Gods in the Panjabi Cult of Gugga:A Structural Semantic Analysis". [4] At the University of Chicago,she also completed her Ph.D. in anthropology in 1973. [5] Her doctoral dissertation was titled Shakti:Power in the Conceptual Structure of Karimpur Religion. [6] It was an analysis and collection of a north India village's stories and songs. [7]
Wadley is a Ford–Maxwell professor emerita of South Asian Studies at the Department of Anthropology of the Syracuse University. [8] [9] She is the former director of the university's South Asia Center. [10] She has also served as the associate dean of the university's Department of Arts and Sciences. [2]
She is the present chairperson of the publications committee of the American Institute of Indian Studies and also of the board of directors of the South Asian Summer Language Institute. [11] She has been a board member of the Open Hand Theatre for nearly 2 decades and had also served as the theatre's president. [2]
The focus of Wadley's studies has been mainly on the study of folklore,folk art traditions,gender issues,religion,and social change in India. [9] Her research interests also includes the study of the effects of the "socioeconomic change" on the female populace of northern India's countryside areas. [5] Rutgers University's Michael Moffatt notes that Wadley is one of the few anthropologists who write monographs on the villages of India. [12] She also have interest in the fields of language,culture and society,and globalization. [8]
She began her anthropological research on India by receiving research grant from the Carnegie Foundation and working in the guidance of McKim Marriott and Milton Singer. Later,her research was funded by the entities like the National Science Foundation,the Smithsonian Institution,and the United States Department of Education. [13] In 1989,she received a grant for the post doctoral fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. [8]
She executed numerous research projects as part of her field research in India which includes Attitudes Towards Girls' Education in a Village Near Delhi (1963–1964),Religious Ideologies and Practices in Karimpur,Uttar Pradesh (1967–1969),The Modernization and Standardization of Hindu Religious Practices in Hindi–speaking North India (1974–1975),Changing Lives:Karimpur Villagers 1925–1984 (1983–1984),The North Indian Epic Dhola (1989,1990,and 1994),Social Change and Globalization in Rural Uttar Pradesh (1998),Social Change and Oral Epics in Rural Uttar Pradesh (2002),Rural–urban Connections,Uttar Pradesh and Delhi (2005),Social Change in Rural Uttar Pradesh (2010),Mithila Folk Art,Madhubani,Bihar (2010–2011). [8]
Wadley's Struggling with Destiny in Karimpur,1925–1984 (1994) was a monographic study of a north Indian village. Moffatt stated that the ethnosociological work done by Wadley was shaped by McKim Marriott's influence on her. Her research on the subject matter was supplemented by the large "unpublished data" which she had received from Charlotte Viall Wiser and William H. Wiser. According to Moffatt,Wadley's work was an "attempt to condense the rich,multi–investigative,long–term research into a single comprehensive account". [12]
Wadley wrote Raja Nal and the Goddess:The North Indian Epic Dhola in Performance (2004) after over 3 decades of "researching and recording" Dhola,an oral epic which is performed in northwestern and northern regions of India and has some goddesses,women and a king named Nal as its heroes. She also did field study in a village in India for her research data. Sadhana Naithani of the Jawaharlal Nehru University noted that Wadley conducted her research on the epic at a time when it is dying out. She stated that though Wadley realized that "Dhola lives in performance",she could not "capture the dynamism of the performance context". According to Naithani,Wadley's "retelling" of the epic was "vastly condensed" which was itself "based on another condensed version". [14]
Wadley's Essays on North Indian Folk Traditions (2005) was "an analysis of the oral traditions" of an Indian village. [15] Her work in the book was based on the field research carried out by her in the village between 1967 and 2002 and the earlier ethnographic research done by the Wisers. [16] Archana Shukla of the University of Delhi stated that Wadley provided "primary and secondary data" and inquired into and compared "the realms of oral and written folk traditions". [15] According to Fabrizio M. Ferrari,Wadley individuated "major issues in the dramatic representation of local epics and their relation with the written Sanskrit tradition". [16]
The village Karimpur of India's Uttar Pradesh which is mentioned in her published works is a pseudonym used by her in place of the real name of the village where she carried out her research. [14] [16]
Wadley is married to Rick Olanoff,and they have 4 daughters. [11]
Raksha Bandhan is a popular and traditionally Hindu annual rite or ceremony that is central to a festival of the same name celebrated in South Asia. It is also celebrated in other parts of the world significantly influenced by Hindu culture. On this day, sisters of all ages tie a talisman or amulet called the rakhi around the wrists of their brothers. They symbolically protect them, receive a gift in return, and traditionally invest the brothers with a share of the responsibility of their potential care.
Ella Cara Deloria, also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, was a Yankton Dakota (Sioux) educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist. She recorded Native American oral history and contributed to the study of Native American languages. According to Cotera (2008), Deloria was "a pre-eminent expert on Dakota/Lakota/Nakota cultural religious, and linguistic practices." In the 1940s, Deloria wrote a novel titled Waterlily, which was published in 1988, and republished in 2009.
Ayyanar is a Tamil deity venerated in South India and Sri Lanka. His worship is prevalent among the Dravidian peoples. Some studies suggest that Ayyanar may have also been worshipped in Southeast Asian countries in the past. He is primarily worshipped as one of the guardian folk deities of Tamil Nadu. The temples of Ayyanar in the countryside are usually flanked by gigantic and colourful statues of him and his companions riding horses or elephants.
Komal Kothari (1929-2004) was an Indian folklorist and ethnomusicologist. Komal Kothari had devoted his life to investigation and documentation of folk traditions of western Rajasthan. Kothari received the honour of Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan from the Government of India. Komal Kothari painstakingly worked to preserve the cultural memory and made numerous recordings of folk music. He studied Langa and Manganiyar communities of folk musicians of Thar desert. Komal Kothari was not only a scholar but also a man of action. He co-founded Rupayan Sansthan - Rajasthan Institute of Folklore, in 1960 in the village of Borunda. The institution houses a repository of recordings by Kothari and works to collect, preserve, and disseminate the oral traditions of Rajasthan. Kothari was co-editor of the journal Lok Sanskriti, a journal based on the theme of folk culture. Besides, Kothari arranged international performances of folk artists from Rajasthan in several counries. His monograph on Langas, a folk-musician caste in Rajasthan, was enlivened by an accompanying album of recordings of twelve folk songs sung by Langa artistes. His understanding of desert culture and its connections with ecology endeared him to the environmentalists. He planned a museum based on the ecology of the broom’, to show the technical use of specific types of desert grass for specific purposes. His vision was actualised in the form of Arna Jharna - The Thar Desert Museum of Rajasthan in Borunda, near Jodhpur. Kothari was a scholar of patterns of culture and his expertise enriched both folklore studies and history.
Pandit Laxmi Ganesh Tewari is a Hindustani vocalist from India. He is an exponent of the Gwalior gharana (tradition) of vocal music. After studying with Lalmani Misra at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, he pursued education and teaching opportunities in America. At Sonoma State University since 1974, his career has combined performance, scholarship and teaching.
The Dhola Maru is the romantic tale of Dhola and Maru in Rajasthan. The Rajasthani version is entirely different from a version found in Chhattisgarh.
Thakur is a historical feudal title of the Indian subcontinent. It is also used as a surname in the present day. The female variant of the title is Thakurani or Thakurain, and is also used to describe the wife of a Thakur.
Charlotte Melina Viall Wiser (1892–1981), born Charlotte Melina Viall, was an American anthropologist, and a Presbyterian rural-missionary to North India – Uttar Pradesh.
William Henricks Wiser (28 January 1890 – 21 February 1961), also spelled as Hendricks, was an American anthropologist, and a Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago IL Presbyterian rural-missionary sent to North India - Uttar Pradesh.
Leela Dube was a renowned anthropologist and feminist scholar, fondly called Leeladee by many. She had been married to the renowned anthropologist and sociologist LateShyama Charan Dube. Leela Dube was the younger sister of the late classical singer Sumati Mutatkar. Her elder son Late Mukul Dube was an avid photographer. She is survived by her younger son, Saurabh Dube. Known for her work on kinship and in women's studies, she wrote several books including Matriliny and Islam: religion and society in the Laccadives and Women and kinship: comparative perspectives on gender in South and South‑east Asia.
Dr. Brenda E.F. Beck, also known as Brindha Beck, is a Canadian anthropologist and exporter of Tamil culture. She has published eight books and authored over sixty journal articles and is a key figure in raising awareness of Tamil culture in Toronto, Canada, where many Tamil Indians settled after the Tamil Diaspora. She lived in Olapalayam near Kangayam for two years in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. She spent two years there for her doctorate in anthropology, awarded by the University of Oxford. The title of the thesis was Social and conceptual order in Koṅku. She published her research in a book under the title of Peasant Society in Koňku.
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Aparna Rao was a German anthropologist who performed studies on social groups in Afghanistan, France, and some regions of India. Her doctorate studies focused on anthropogeography, ethnology, and Islamic studies. Rao taught anthropology at the University of Cologne, serving for a brief time as chair of the Department of Ethnology at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University, Germany.
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Dirk Herbert Arnold Kolff is a Dutch historian and Indologist. Born at Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Kolff earned a doctorate degree from the Leiden University in 1983 with a doctoral thesis on the research subject of armed peasantry in northern India. He is a professor emeritus of modern South Asian history and the former Chair of Indian History at the Leiden University.
Harald Tambs-Lyche is a Norwegian ethnologist and social anthropologist.
Susan S. Wadley, Ford Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University, received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1973. Her research interests range from women's ritual and folklore to regional epic traditions to socioeconomic change, especially as it affects women in rural north India.
Her doctoral dissertation (at Chicago in 1973) is the book Shakti: power in the conceptual structure of Karimpur religion.
Susan Snow Wadley collected and analyzed stories and songs of a North Indian village called Karimpur in Shakti: Power in the Conceptual Structure of Karimpur Religion.
It has been a tremendous honor to begin my tenure as the new Director of the South Asia Center, following the many years of inspired and tireless leadership of my predecessors, Susan Wadley and Ann Gold.