Dipesh Chakrabarty

Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College.
Ph.D. Australian National University 1984

FIELD SPECIALTIES

Modern South Asian history; subaltern, indigenous, and minority histories; labor history; history of Bengal; history in/and public life; empire, colonial rule, and modernity; postcolonial theory and history.

BIOGRAPHY

Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College. He is also a Faculty Fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, holds a visiting position at the Research School of Humanities at the Australian National University, and an Honorary Professorial Fellowship with the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia . He is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies, a co-editor of Critical Inquiry, and a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies. He has also served on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review and Public Culture.

Chakrabarty's books include: Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal 1890-1940 (Princeton: 1989, 2000); Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000; second edn. forthcoming in 2007); Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago, 2000); Provincializzare l'Europa (Rome: Meltemi, 2004). He has also edited (with Shahid Amin) Subaltern Studies IX (Delhi: OUP, 1996), (with Carol Breckenridge, Homi Bhabha, and Sheldon Pollock) Cosmopolitanism (Duke, 2000), and (with Rochona Majumdar and Andrew Sartori) From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (Delhi: OUP, 2007). French and Spanish translations of Provincializing Europe are due out in 2008.

Chakrabarty was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2004 and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2006.

Chakrabarty's current research is focused on the development of history as a profession in South Asia in the first half of the twentieth century and its relationship to public life. He has also been working on changing forms of mass-politics in the subcontinent. His recent and forthcoming publications include:

"Romantic Archives: Literature and the Politics of Identity in Bengal" in Critical Inquiry, Spring 2004

"The Fall and Rise of Indian Sports History," Introductory essay to Sport in South Asian Society, edited by Boria Majumdar and J. A. Mangan, Routledge. 2005.

"After History: Vergenheit archivieren, erfahren und zerstören" in Historische Anthropologie (Gottingen, Germany), 13 (1), 2005. German translation of "After History: Archiving, Preserving, and Destroying the Past." (unpublished in English).

"The Legacies of Bandung: Decolonization and the Politics of Culture," Economic and Political Weekly, 12 November 2005.

"Recording the Past: How popular culture is shaping the future of history," Biblio (Delhi), vol.10, Nos. 9-10. Translated into Malayalam in Pachakuthira, February 2006.

"Subaltern History as Political Thought" in V. R. Mehta and Thomas Pantham eds., Political Ideas in Modern India: Thematic Explorations (Delhi: Sage, 2006).

"A Global and Multicultural 'Discipline' of History?", review-essay in History and Theory, Vol.45, No.1, February 2006.

"Politics Unlimited: The Global Adivasi and Debates about the Political," Afterword to Bengt A. Karlsson and Tanka B. Subba eds. The Politics of Indigeneity in India (London: Routledge, 2006).

"Risky Histories: Indigenous pasts, democracy, and the discipline of history – a dialogue between Dipesh Chakrabarty and Bain Attwood," Meanjin (Melbourne), vol.65, no.1, 2006.

(Interview) "Dipesh Chakrabarty: Quelle histoire pour les dominés?," Sciences Humaines (Paris), October 2006.

" 'In the Name of Politics': Democracy and the Power of the Multitude in India," Public Culture, vol.19, no.1, Winter 2007.

"Remembering 1857: An Introductory Note," Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLII, No. 19, May 12, 2007

(with Rochona Majumdar), "Mangal Pandey: Film and History," Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLII, No. 19, May 12, 2007.

"History and the Politics of Recognition" in Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, and Alan Munslow eds., Manifestos for Historians (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 77-86.

"Das Wisssen der Weltregionen: Birgit Schäbler im Gespräch mit Dipesh Chakrabarty," in Birgit Schäbler ed., Area Studies und die Welt: Weltregionen und neue Globalgeschichte (Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2007), pp.252-258.

L'Humanisme En Una Era Global/ Humanism in An Age of Globalization, (Barcelona: Center for Contemporary Culture, 2008).

"In Defense of Provincializing Europe: A Response to Carola Dietze" in History and Theory, vol. 17, no. 1, 2008, pp.85-96.

"The Public Life of History: An Argument Out of India" in Public Culture, vol. 20, no. 1, Winter 2008, pp. 143-168. Special issue on "The Public Life of History" edited by Bain Attwood, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Claudio Lomnitz.

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