Ronald Inden    CONTACT INFORMATION: Professor of History and of South Asian Languages and Civilizations Ph. D. University of Chicago. 1972. FIELD SPECIALTIES: Ancient and Medieval India; Hindu Thought; Cultural Studies; Orientalism The University of Chicago Department of History 1126 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Fax: (773) 702-7550 Office: (773) 702-8345 Email: rbinden@midway.uchicago.edu   Ron Inden is currently investigating changes inclass formations in India in relation to changes in world ruling classesand the ways in which people have tried to articulate these changes withintellectual practices and national/ethnic "identities" in thetwentieth century. He is particularly interested in people's efforts toconstruct paradises or utopias on earth in and beside their everyday lives.These involve practices ranging from "rituals" in medieval ortraditional societies to the "media" in modern ones and, especiallyin India, the world of cinema. The problems of how people have situatedand resituated these differing practices in a "developing" countrylike India bring together my historical, anthropological, and Indologicalinterests. Publications include: Imagining India. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990; paperback, March1992. Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste and Clan inMiddle Period Bengal. University of California Press, 1975. "Transcending Identities in Modern India's World," Politicsand the Ends of Identity, ed. Kathryn Dean. London, Ashgate, 1997, 64-102. "Embodying God: From Imperial Progresses to National Progress in India,"Economy and Society, 24.2 (May 1995), 245-78. "Changes in the Vedic Priesthood," Ritual, State and Historyin South Asia: Essays in honour of J. C. Heesterman, ed. A. W. van denHoek, D. H. A. Kolff, & M. S. Oort. Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1992, pp. 556-77. "Tradition Against Itself," American Ethnologist, XIII.4(November 1986), 762-75. "Orientalist Constructions of India," Modern Asian Studies,XX.3 (1986), 401-46. Return to Main FacultyPage. Copyright © 1999, The University of Chicago Site URL: http://social-sciences.uchicago.edu/history Site Design: Neal Enssle Site Maintenance: HistoryDepartment Text-based navigation treeavailable Last Page Update: February 15, 1999 The University of Chicago Division of the Social Sciences Department of History 1126 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 USA (773) 702-8397