FACULTY NEWS

• FACULTY NEWS
  
  As co-editor of Law and Hinduism: An Introduction (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press), Don Davis, Department of Language and Culture of Asia, has organized a Workshop on Law and Hinduism on October 11, 2007, as a pre-conference event of the Annual Conference on South Asia.  Twelve contributors to the volume will meet to discuss drafts of their chapters in preparation for final publication. 
  
  Davis also presented a paper, “Law in the Mirror of Language: the Madras School of Orientalism on Hindu Law,” at the Madras School of Orientalism conference at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in May 2007.
  
  

  Afsar Mohammad, has got a position as Lecturer, Asian Studies at University of Texas, Austin. He will be teaching South Asian literature and Telugu this Fall and Spring, one course on Dalit Literature and Culture and one on ' South Asia and the Novel'.

  Last year, as an award winner of the AIIS, Afsar was in India for his fieldwork on village Muharram and now working on his dissertation. While in India, he presented two papers in national conferences: one on "Deccani Urdu Oral Narratives Told by Hindu women"   at Central Institute of English as Foreign Language(CIEFL, Hyderabad) and another on ' The Making of Shared Ritual Texts' at the Dravidian University. He also gave an extension lecture at the Department of English and Comparative Literatures, University of Hyderabad on the topic ' Gendered Narratives: Muharram in Telugu and Urdu contexts'.

  Besides his dissertation on Village Muharram, Afsar is also working on  Hindu writings in Urdu  about Muslim Cultures during the  Post-partition period(1948-50) in Andhra.  
  
  Yaroslav Komarovski, Visiting Assistant Professor, teaches Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist thought, and Buddhist ritual systems. He holds a Ph.D from the University of Virginia, and specializes in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist doctrinal systems, logic and epistemology, diverse Buddhist interpretations of reality and related polemical issues, models of the Buddhist paths, theories and practices of Buddhist Tantra, and classical and modern Tibetan language.

  
  
  
  

• FACULTY AWARDS
  
  Don Davis, Department of Language and Culture of Asia, received an NEH fellowship for his book project, The Spirit of Hindu Law, during the 2007-2008 academic year.
  
  Afsar Mohammad was selected by the Government of India and the Central Institute of Indian Languages for their prestigious literary award 'BHASHA SAMMAN' for his recent poetry book in Telugu. They've selected five books from all Indian languages for this honour. 
  
  
  
• RECENT PUBLICATIONS
  
  Donald R. Davis, Jr.
  
  2008. “Law,” In Studying Hinduism: Key Concepts and Methods. Eds. Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby. New York: Routledge, 218-229. [released in September 2007]
  
  2007. “Hinduism as a Legal Tradition.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75: 2, 241-267.
  
  2007. “The Non-Observance of Conventions: A Title of Hindu Law in the Smṛticandrikā.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 157:1, 103-124.