CLAREMONT, Calif., July 25,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Claremont
McKenna College Emeritus Professor Nita Kumar has been awarded a Guggenheim
Fellowship, a highly competitive grant that invests in scholars,
artists, scientists, writers, and cultural visionaries.
With her Guggenheim Fellowship, Kumar plans to research and
write a social history of an urban upper-middle class Kayastha
family from 1911 to 2016 covering much of Uttar Pradesh. She will
look at gender hierarchies, theorize change in 20th-century
India, and present a
contextualized discussion of the historian's craft.
"The research will focus on the history of a woman known as
Suniti and her upper middle-class family at several levels,
reflecting on how the story is impacted by the state of official
and family archives, Indian notions of time and history, discourses
of gender, caste and class," said Kumar. "Over five generations,
the members of Suniti's family occupied the ranks of landowners,
administrators, writers, judges, and advocates."
Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process
from a pool of almost 3,000 applicants, the Class of 2024
Guggenheim Fellows was selected on the basis of prior career
achievement. A number of the Fellows' projects directly respond to
issues of today such as democracy and politics, identity,
disability activism, machine learning, incarceration, climate
change and community. Each fellow receives a monetary stipend to
pursue independent work.
"I am honored to be one of this year's Guggenheim Fellowship
recipients," said Kumar. "Throughout my career in writing and
teaching, I have been interested in issues of how history is
interpreted and written, and similarly as an anthropologist, I have
focused on methodological issues. This grant is a culmination of my
professional work to date and I look forward to delving deeper into
the story of Suniti and her family."
About Nita Kumar
Professor Nita Kumar is currently
director of NIRMAN, a nonprofit organization focused on education
and the arts in Varanasi. She completed her Ph.D. from the
University of Chicago in History and
has taught at the University of
Chicago, Brown University, and
the University of Michigan. She was
most recently the Brown Family Chair of South Asian History at
Claremont McKenna College.
About Claremont McKenna
College:
Claremont McKenna College is a private,
1,300-student residential liberal arts college located east of
Los Angeles in Southern California. Since 1946, the College's
mission has been to prepare students for thoughtful and productive
lives and responsible leadership in business, government, and the
professions. Renowned for its Open Academy commitments to freedom
of expression, viewpoint diversity, and constructive dialogue, as
well as expertise in economics and government, Claremont McKenna also features an accomplished
faculty of scholars and committed teachers in the humanities,
sciences, and social sciences. Students are drawn to the College's
unparalleled offerings, including: 11 research institutes and
centers; the ability to conduct research one-on-one with faculty;
and access to leaders, artists, and visionaries who engage with
students at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum. Claremont McKenna is a member of The Claremont
Colleges. For more information,
visit https://www.cmc.edu/.
Media Contact:
Gilien Silsby
(213) 500-8673
gsilsby@cmc.edu
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SOURCE Claremont McKenna College