Affected by Landslides: PhD Research in Kalimpong District

Hills of Kalimpong.

Image credit: Anuj Kumar Pradhan

According to an article in the July 22nd issue of India Today, 27 people have lost their lives in landslides in Darjeeling and Kalimpong Districts. Searching for more information took me to Peter McGowran's discussion of his PhD research on the topic. This is an area about which I know little, so I enjoyed reading it (as much as one can enjoy reading about preventable deaths).

Read Peter McGowran's blog at: A Reflection on My PhD Fieldwork Experience Kalimpong District, India.

STS Research, COVID-19, the Global South

This is a bit belated, but I just found this discussion between editors/assistant editors at Backchannels. Gloria Baigorrotegui (Santiago), Amanda Domingues (New York), Joseph Satish Vedanayagam (Hyderabad), María Elissa Torres Carrasco (Cuenca), Olusegun Alonge (Berlin), and Xan Chacko (Meanjin/Brisbane) share their thoughts on the pandemic and scientific research.

"Silence is key to continue breathing."

Doing STS research in a Covid-19 world: Voices from the global South

A Real Threat to Research and Safety

Any woman* considering dissertation research in India should read Audrey Truschke's recent essay** and take it seriously. As a scholar working in science studies, cultural heritage management, and architectural/landscape history, I've run up against the limits of what can be said without threat of a masculinist Hindutva retaliation. While my personal safety has never been threatened (that I know of), I have certainly done a lot of self-censoring when applying for visas, pursuing certain research topics, and publishing on certain topics. I thought long and hard before publishing my article on Ayodhya, and I had to take multiple deep breaths before publishing an article that undermines the myth of Jaipur as a Hindu city (city plan).

My dissertation research will probably never make it into book form, but that may be just as well, as interpreting Jai Singh's observatories as sites of an exclusively Hindu science is just not possible. Certainly earlier Hindu/Sanskrit texts played a role, especially early in Jai Singh's explorations, but arguably, Islamic and then European texts were more important during the era of design and construction.

I don't know what kind of risk I'd be willing to assume to see my book published. Professionally, I'm not dependent on it for promotion and advancement, so having my book pulped like Wendy Doniger's wouldn't necessarily hurt my career. But it would hurt personally, tremendously, beyond what I could express.

Knowing the problem is the first step: be aware of what's going on. Solving the problem is the second, third, fourth, and fifth step. Men, support your more vulnerable colleagues at home and in the field. Think about how networks that are so valuable to your research may be failing to help your female colleagues. If your voice is being heard, use it for change. Listen to the women with whom you work.

*Really, this warning is for everyone working in South Asian studies, but women, trans, and non-binary people are definitely more at personal risk.

**Thank you to the scholar who shared this essay via the ACSAA network this morning.

When COVID-19 Impacts your PhD Fieldwork

Ru-Yin Lu was conducing Ph.D. research in Arunachal Pradesh when the pandemic made itself known. When do you decide to leave a research site? How do you decide to leave?

A brief aside: I was studying Russian at Leningrad (St. Petersburg) State University when the the U.S. shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf. It was an anxiety-ridden time for me--it was difficult to get news or hear any commentary that wasn't drenched in Cold War rhetoric. There was no easy way to contact family or friends in the U.S. I imagine those Soviet days = Stage 1 of what this scholar experienced. No easy thing.

Read more: Ru-Yin Lu, When COVID-19 Impacts your PhD Fieldwork.

How Kelsey Utne Does History

Contingent Magazine has a new series on how historians work. First up: "How Kelsey Utne Does History". Utne is a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell, working on the politics of human remains and the memorialization of death in late colonial India. In the spring, she's teaching a writing seminar called "Landscapes of Death: Memorials, Monuments, & Massacre Sites."

Direct link: https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/10/31/how-kelsey-utne-does-history/

Deaf Multiliteracies Project

A brief but interesting write-up of Eilidh Rose McEwan's fieldwork in Odisha and Indore with the International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies Deaf Multiliteracies Project. Intrigued by the Happy Hands School for the Deaf in Odisha, and I would be interested to know how many similar institutions there are in India and how those number compare to vision support programs.

Read more at: Eilidh Rose McEwan: PhD Fieldwork in India.

Editing and Research Assistance for South Asianists

Re-posted from H-ASIA:

From: Maggie Ronkin

Dear H-Asia Colleagues and Friends,

I am a South Asianist, chiefly a Pakistanist, who is starting a client-centered communications consultancy in Washington, DC. Over more than two decades, I have acquired academic training and expertise to handle a range of assignments focusing on non-Western topics and requiring skills pertinent to the qualitative social sciences and humanities. I welcome your work involving research; editing and proofreading of papers, proposals, and publications; production and promotion of events, and special assignments. I can Skype and travel. I co-edited three volumes in applied sociolinguistics for a major U.S. university press and Mouton de Gruyter and co-organized two international conferences. More recently, I edited for Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard University authors in anthropology, literature, and women’sstudies; produced a proposal for a U.S.-South Asian educational partnership; launched a U.S.-South Asian videoconferencing initiative in development studies, and freelanced other assignments. On my 2011 visit to South Asia, I completed exploratory research on constructions of African-Pakistani identities and delivered a lecture series in applied sociolinguistics.

For an appointment to discuss your project, please email me at
ronkinm@hotmail.com.

Maggie Ronkin
Washington, D.C.