Mickey Eder (University of Chicago)

submitted: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 12:21:31 -0600 (CST)

Milton "Mickey" Eder
William Rainey Harper Instructor
Social Science Collegiate Division
University of Chicago
5845 S. Ellis Ave
Gates Blake Hall #224
Chicago, IL  60637  USA

phone: 312-702-3318
FAX:   312-702-5846
email: oome@midway.uchicago.edu

Description of work:

My teaching activities have been in the social sciences and the
humanities.  I have taught courses which engage in a close textual
analysis of literary works (e.g. Mahabharata and Bhagavadgita, Shahnameh,
Tale of Genji, and Story of the Stone) for their cultural, social and
historical resonances.  I have also taught a common core social science
course which examines approaches to the study of "Self, Culture, and
Society" and I have been involved in courses concerning alternative or
non-traditional approaches to the politial science approach to
international relations and globalization.  In these diverse courses which
address questions of conflict and cooperation, transnationalism and
nationalism, environmental issues, etc... my own work has focused on South
Asian examples. 

My research interests in South Asia include a dissertation on translations
of the Bhagavadgita as a means to study the history of West-East
comparative scholarship over the last century, particularly historical
shifts in comparative conceptualizations of the person.  I am revising
this work for publication.  I am also researching the role of religion in
Indian nationalist projects; Gandhi (particularly his "The Story of My
Experiments with Truth" as part of my comparative study of conceptions of
the person); and the role of South Asia in the liberal arts college
curriculum. 

My more general research and reading interests include the cultural
history of South Asia, the history of the human sciences and semiotic
analysis.  I try to keep up with humanistically oriented scholarship about
South India. I am sorry to say that my limited knowledge of Telegu and
Tamil slowly atrophies as my teaching responsibilities take me in new
directions.