Ishan Chakrabarti

Ishan
Cohort Year: 2010
Advisor(s): Thibaut d'Hubert
Research Interests: Asceticism/mysticism/monasticism, pre-colonial Southern Asia, Bengal, Sanskrit, Bangla, Hindi
Education: MA, University of Texas, 2010. BA, University of Texas, 2008.

Biography

For my dissertation project I work with Bangla, Sanskrit and Hindi texts from 1400-1700 CE. I am concerned with the construction of kinds of persons in early Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism and get at this by studying the relationships between literary texts (poems and plays), literary-critical texts (śāstras and commentaries) and narrative hagiographies. I also read Urdu and some Classical Greek and Arabic. I have broader and more comparative interests in pre-colonial South Asian literatures writ large, and in the mystical and monastic traditions of Southern Asia as a whole.

Workshops

Theory and Practice of South Asia, coordinator 2013-2014.

Field of Study

Literature, History, Religion, South Asia

Research Interests

Asceticism/mysticism/monasticism, pre-colonial Southern Asia, Bengal, Sanskrit, Bangla, Hindi

Teaching Experience

  • Instructor of Advanced Bangla (Autumn 2013)
  • Teaching Assistant for First-Year Hindi (under Jason Grunebaum, Autumn 2013)
  • Teaching Assistant for First-Year Sanskrit (under Katarzyna Pażucha, Autumn 2014)
  • Teaching Assistant for South Asian Civilization (under Muzaffar Alam, Winter 2015)
  • Teaching Assistant for First-Year Hindi at the University of Texas at Austin (under Rupert Snell, Autumn 2009).

Education

M.A., University of Texas, 2010.

B.A., University of Texas, 2008.