MEALAC | Sheldon Pollock

Sheldon Pollock

Sheldon Pollock
The William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit & Indian Studies
626 Kent Hall
212-854-6781
sp2356@columbia.edu
Office hours spring semester 2007: Tu 2:00-4:00 and by appointment

Biography

Sheldon Pollock is The William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, formerly George V. Bobrinskoy Distinguished Service Professor of Sanskrit and Indic Studies at the University of Chicago. He was educated at Harvard University (AB mcl Classics 1971; AM Sanskrit and Indian Studies 1973; PhD Sanskrit and Indian Studies 1975). His areas of specialization are Sanskrit philology and Indian intellectual and literary history, and, increasingly, comparative intellectual history.

Recent and forthcoming publications:

Rama’s Last Act (Uttararamacarita) of Bhavabhuti. Edited, translated, and annotated, with an Introduction; forward by Girish Karnad. New York: New York University Press. The Clay Sanskrit Library, 2007, 451 pp. (download Introduction)

“Pretextures of Time,” History and Theory 46 (October 2007): 364-381. (download)

“Literary Culture and Manuscript Culture in Precolonial India.” In Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash, Ian Willison, eds. History of the Book and Literary Cultures. London: British Library, 2006, pp. 77-94. (download)

“Empire and Imitation.” In Craig Calhoun, Frederick Cooper, and Kevin Moore, eds. Lessons of Empire. New York: New Press, 2006, pp. 175-188. (download)

The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2006.

“Ratnasrijñana.” In R. K. Sharma, ed. Encyclopedia of Indian Wisdom: Dr. Satya Vrat Shastri Felicitation Volume. Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 2005, pp. 637-43. (download)

The Ends of Man at the End of Premodernity. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005 (download)

Visvatmaka Desabhase [The Cosmopolitan Vernacular], tr. Akshara K.V. Heggodu (Karnataka): Akshara Prakashana, 2003, D.R. Nagaraj Nenapina Akshara Chintana Maale. (A collection of essays on Kannada literary culture in Kannada translation, with a new introduction)

Ed. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern South Asia (Duke U. Press, forthcoming).

Ed. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2003.

Ed., with Carol Breckenridge, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Homi Bhabha. Cosmopolitanism. Durham: Duke U. Press, 2002.

Pollock currently directs the international collaborative research project Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonialism. Related to this is the Master Class on "Comparative Intellectual Histories of the Early Modern World" held at the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) in May-June, 2006. For a brief account of the procedings see the IIAS Newsletter 43 (Spring, 2007).

He is General Editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library, for which he has translated a number of volumes (including the Uttararamacarita of Bhavabhuti, and the Rasamanjari and Rasatarangini of Bhanudatta); and he is joint editor of "South Asia across the Disciplines," a joint publication venture of the U. of California Press, U. of Chicago Press, and Columbia U.

His new book project is provisionally titled "Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World."

In 2008, Pollock's students arranged a conference in his honor entitled Language, Culture and Power.


Home Faculty Programs Courses Languages Events News Faculty Openings Affiliates Admissions		Sheldon Pollock The William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit & Indian Studies 626 Kent Hall 212-854-6781 sp2356@columbia.edu Office hours spring semester 2007: Tu 2:00-4:00 and by appointment Biography Sheldon Pollock is The William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, formerly George V. Bobrinskoy Distinguished Service Professor of Sanskrit and Indic Studies at the University of Chicago. He was educated at Harvard University (AB mcl Classics 1971; AM Sanskrit and Indian Studies 1973; PhD Sanskrit and Indian Studies 1975). His areas of specialization are Sanskrit philology and Indian intellectual and literary history, and, increasingly, comparative intellectual history. Recent and forthcoming publications: Rama’s Last Act (Uttararamacarita) of Bhavabhuti. Edited, translated, and annotated, with an Introduction; forward by Girish Karnad. New York: New York University Press. The Clay Sanskrit Library, 2007, 451 pp. (download Introduction) “Pretextures of Time,” History and Theory 46 (October 2007): 364-381. (download) “Literary Culture and Manuscript Culture in Precolonial India.” In Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash, Ian Willison, eds. History of the Book and Literary Cultures. London: British Library, 2006, pp. 77-94. (download) “Empire and Imitation.” In Craig Calhoun, Frederick Cooper, and Kevin Moore, eds. Lessons of Empire. New York: New Press, 2006, pp. 175-188. (download) The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2006. “Ratnasrijñana.” In R. K. Sharma, ed. Encyclopedia of Indian Wisdom: Dr. Satya Vrat Shastri Felicitation Volume. Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 2005, pp. 637-43. (download) The Ends of Man at the End of Premodernity. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005 (download) Visvatmaka Desabhase [The Cosmopolitan Vernacular], tr. Akshara K.V. Heggodu (Karnataka): Akshara Prakashana, 2003, D.R. Nagaraj Nenapina Akshara Chintana Maale. (A collection of essays on Kannada literary culture in Kannada translation, with a new introduction) Ed. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern South Asia (Duke U. Press, forthcoming). Ed. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2003. Ed., with Carol Breckenridge, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Homi Bhabha. Cosmopolitanism. Durham: Duke U. Press, 2002. Pollock currently directs the international collaborative research project Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonialism. Related to this is the Master Class on "Comparative Intellectual Histories of the Early Modern World" held at the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) in May-June, 2006. For a brief account of the procedings see the IIAS Newsletter 43 (Spring, 2007). He is General Editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library, for which he has translated a number of volumes (including the Uttararamacarita of Bhavabhuti, and the Rasamanjari and Rasatarangini of Bhanudatta); and he is joint editor of "South Asia across the Disciplines," a joint publication venture of the U. of California Press, U. of Chicago Press, and Columbia U. His new book project is provisionally titled "Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World." In 2008, Pollock's students arranged a conference in his honor entitled Language, Culture and Power.