Department Colloquium: Deven Patel (Penn) "New Directions in the Study of Indian Classical Humanities"

Speaker: Deven Patel, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Title: "New Directions in the Study of Indian Classical Humanities"

Abstract: While the title suggests more than can be accomplished in a short presentation, the plan is to identify and share with Latin and Greek classicists a few of the sturdier scholarly trends in Classical Indology in recent decades.  I hope to present, in synopsis, some of my own research as it pertains to certain subfields, including work on Sanskrit epic studies, classical mahākāvya (belles-lettres, broadly understood), and poetics, drawing out thereby important innovations in reception studies, intellectual history, and the contemporary political uses (and abuses) of classical works.  The hope is to engage scholars of classical antiquity in a conversation that locates where global classical traditions intersect in their ongoing evolution as a field and where they diverge—and why.