Fellowship Programs

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• Information about the Fellowship Competition
  Application Deadline
  Junior Research Fellowships
  Senior Research Fellowships
  Senior Scholarly Development Fellowships
  Senior Performing Arts Fellowships
• Examples of Successful Proposals
  Monthly Calculations for Awards
  Funding Agencies
• 2007-2008 AIIS Fellows
• 2008-2009 AIIS Fellows
• Former AIIS Junior Fellows

General Information about the Fellowship Programs

Founded to assist scholars in their study of all aspects of Indian history, culture and contemporary life, the Institute brings about 40 scholars to India every year. These are both American citizens as well as non-American citizens resident in the United States. Of the latter group, many are Indian graduate students studying for Ph.D. degrees at American universities. Many of them return to India, where they assume faculty positions at Indian institutions. In turn, many Indian scholars are invited by member institutions of the American Institute of Indian Studies to lecture or participate in conferences. The Institute then facilitates their travel arrangements and can use its network of scholars across the United States to organize programs of lectures. Fellowships are granted by the American Institute of Indian Studies in the following categories:

Senior Research Fellowships
These are awarded to established academic specialists in Indian studies who possess the Ph.D. or equivalent. Pursuant to Indian government requirements, each research fellow is formally affiliated with an Indian university during the course of work in India. Award periods range from 6 to 9 months.

Senior Short-Term Fellowships
These are the same as Senior Research fellowships except the award period is up to four months.

Fellowships for Scholarly Development
A limited number of fellowships are awarded to established scholars who have not previously specialized in Indian studies, and to established professionals who have not previously worked or studied in India. Proposals in this category have a substantial research or project
component and clearly defined anticipated results. No individual can receive a grant in this category more than once.

Junior Fellowships
Junior Fellowships are awarded to graduate students specializing in Indian aspects of academic disciplines for Ph.D. dissertation research. Junior Fellows are formally affiliated with Indian universities and research supervisors. Awards are for a period of up to 11 months.

Review Process and Outcome
Applications for fellowships are screened and chosen by a Selection Committee comprised of experts in various fields but all with extensive India experience. Selected scholars are granted fellowships upon receipt of project approval by the Government of India. Upon completion of the fellowship tenure, senior scholars contribute to the growing understanding of India through their publications, and junior fellows complete Ph.D. degrees and join the ranks of faculty at colleges and universities across the United States. Each year, therefore, scholars returning from Institute fellowships in India directly impact literally thousands of students across the country through their teaching and thousands more through their publications.

Applications which do not meet the requirements listed below will NOT be considered and the processing fee will not be returned.

The application deadline for the AIIS Fellowship Competition is July 1.  Applications must be emailed to AIIS by email attachment (aiis@uchicago.edu) by July 1.  Applicants will be notified of the selection committee’s decisions by the beginning of October. The earliest possible departure date for India by awardees is eleven (11) months following the date of application submission.

It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure that all application materials, including letters of recommendation, curriculum vitae, transcripts, and samples of work for Senior performing and creative arts applicants are received prior to the deadline.  Late materials will not be considered.

Please duplicate your completed application for your files.  Keep the duplicate and all submitted material in easy access, as you may need it for reference over the next two years.

Two full years must have elapsed between the completion of a previous AIIS fellowship and the current application deadline.  This rule does NOT apply to recipients of AIIS language program fellowships.

AIIS Fellows may not hold another major grant during the Fellowship period. 

Criteria for Evaluation:

The Selection Committee will assess each application on the basis of the project description, the candidate’s academic and/or professional record, and the quality of references.  Members of the Selection Committee represent a number of different academic disciplines within the field of Indian Studies, so the applicant must explain the nature and significance of the project in terms intelligible to a non-specialist audience.  Please avoid jargon and be as concise as possible.

1.                        Application Form:

The application must be typed and all questions answered on the form itself.  It is not acceptable to refer to appended material.  Be sure to answer each question on the form.  If all questions are not answered, the application may be rejected.

Please check the Fellowship for which you are applying.  AIIS Fellowships are available only in the following categories for the lengths of time specified:

Junior Research Fellowships.  Available to doctoral candidates at US colleges and universities in all fields of study, for periods of up to eleven (11) months.  Dependents allowance will be given for up to two dependents as long as they remain with the fellow in India at least six months. Under exceptional circumstances, an applicant for a junior fellowship who is a U.S. citizen may request up to five months of language instruction prior to commencing dissertation research.  The request for language training should be integrated into the project proposal.

Senior Long Term Research Fellowships.  Available to scholars who hold the Ph.D. or its equivalent.  Non-U.S. citizens are welcome to apply if they are teaching at a U.S. college or university.  Senior Fellowships are available for six (6) to nine (9) months. Dependents allowance will be given for up to two dependents as long as they remain with the fellow in India at least six months.

Senior Short Term Research Fellowships.  Available to scholars who hold the Ph.D. or its equivalent.  Non-U.S. citizens are welcome to apply if they are teaching at a U.S. college or university.  Senior Short Term Fellowships are available for up to four (4) months.

Senior Scholarly/Professional Development Fellowships.  Available to established scholars who have not previously specialized in Indian studies and to established professionals who have not previously worked or studied in India.  Senior Scholarly/Professional Development Fellowships may be granted for periods of six (6) to nine (9) months.

Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowships.  Available to accomplished practitioners of the performing arts of India and creative artists who demonstrate that study in India would enhance their skills, develop their capabilities to teach or perform in the US, enhance American involvement with India’s artistic traditions, and strengthen their links with peers in India.  Applicants for the Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowship must submit a sample of her/his work.  See Part 3 of the instructions for details.  Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowships are normally granted for periods of up to four months, although proposals for periods up to nine months can be considered.

Applicants who are not affiliated with an AIIS member institution are WELCOME to apply

Please note: We welcome applications from scholars who are part of a collaborative project involving other scholars.  However, we award fellowships to individuals not to teams, and the fellowship amounts awarded to successful applicants who are members of group projects will be equivalent to fellowships awarded to scholars who submitted applications for individual projects.

For the question regarding current status or title, if you are a faculty member, please indicate whether you are tenured or untenured.

The Project Summary must be typed on both the Application for Fellowship and the Reviewer Worksheet.

2.                        Reviewer Worksheet:

The Reviewer Worksheet provides basic identifying information about the proposed project.  It is used in the review process to summarize the three primary areas of competitive review:  Project Description, Academic and/or Professional Record, and Quality of References.

The Reviewer Worksheet also enables the AIIS to summarize general information about the applicant pool and the range of subject matter submitted to it for consideration.  Summary statements with this kind of information enable the Institute to solicit funds for its fellowship program.  When naming your discipline, please choose one only from the following categories. 

Anthropology    Archaeology    Architecture    Art

Behavioral Sciences    Communications    Cultural Studies     Economics

Education    Environmental Studies    Ethnomusicology    Film/Photography

Geography    History of Art/Architecture    History of Science    History

Linguistics    Literature    Medicine    Natural Sciences

Performing Arts    Philosophy    Political Science    Public Health

Religious Studies    Sociology    Theater/Dance    Urban Planning

3.                        Supplemental Materials:

Please refer to the Application Checklist when assembling your application and return the checklist with your application materials to AIIS. 

All applications must include a project statement describing fully your proposed research.  Make clear your reasons for pursuing this research, the significance of your project and its relevance to other scholarship, your research methodology, anticipated results of your study, and your time-table for completing the project.  If the completion of this project requires research outside of India, or if you plan a departure from India during the time of award, please so note in the timetable for completion.  Also attach a one-page bibliography related to your project.  Please remember that your proposal will be read and evaluated by a committee representing India specialists with diverse disciplinary expertise.

The project statement must conform to the following requirements:  it must be no longer than six (6) pages, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and printed in a type size no smaller than 12 points.  The project statement must be clearly legible.  Applications that do not conform to these specifications will not be read by the Committee or returned by the Institute.

All applicants must also submit a curriculum vitae of no more than two (2) pages.  It should include major publications with the names of publishers and dates of publication.  Citations for articles and monographs must be complete.  Please identify clearly all publications resulting from prior AIIS-supported research with an asterisk.

Applicants for the Junior Research Fellowship must include official transcripts from all undergraduate and graduate institutions attended in the U.S. with their application. 

Applicants for the Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowship must submit two copies of some significant sample of their work, e.g. high quality videotape for filmmakers, dancers and perhaps musicians; high quality audio tape (if not video) for musicians; and photographs or slides for visual artists.  Video and audio recordings should be continuous, not excerpted, at least fifteen minutes but preferably a half hour in length.  Materials will be returned at the candidate's request.

4.                        Confidential References:

Each applicant must secure three letters of recommendation.  Referees should have sufficient knowledge about the applicant and the proposed project to assess the project as well as the applicant’s qualifications to carry it out.

In the past we have found delinquent references to be the most serious problem in giving full consideration to an applicant’s proposal.  The applicant is responsible for assuring timely submission of recommendations.  Referees must submit their letters by email attachment to aiis@uchicago.edu. We strongly recommend that you request letters of recommendation as soon as you start working on the application.

5.                        Affiliation with an institution in India:

ALL SCHOLARS WHO CONDUCT RESEARCH IN INDIA MUST BE AFFILIATED WITH AN INDIAN INSTITUTION. WE WILL ARRANGE INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION FOR OUR FELLOWS. NON-INDIAN CITIZENS WILL NEED A RESEARCH VISA TO DO RESEARCH IN INDIA AND THE CERTIFICATE OF AFFILIATION FROM AN INDIAN INSTITUTION IS REQUIRED TO OBTAIN THE RESEARCH VISA. No fellowship funds will be released until we have obtained A CERTIFICATE OF AFFILIATION.

The Indian Government requires that all foreign scholars be associated with an Indian institution.  Please provide the names of three institutions with which you wish to be affiliated on the affiliate sponsor form.  Please CAREFULLY read the information regarding affiliation on the affiliate sponsor form.  The Institute will pursue affiliation on your behalf to expedite the project approval process.

Two-page project information sheet. In order to obtain the certificate of affiliation, we also ask that applicants submit a two-page (maximum) project information sheet. This two-page document should also be used for non-Indian citizens when it is time to obtain their research visas for India. The project information sheet should provide important information about the project to be carried out such as: where the applicant wishes to go; what the applicant wishes to do; materials to be looked at; types of information to be collected. The project information sheet should not be written in jargon. Applicants should avoid discussing theoretical frameworks, methodological issues, literature reviews, etc. Please remember that the document is to be reviewed by non-academics for the purposes of issuing a certificate of affiliation and, eventually, the research visa. The AIIS selection committee will not review the two-page information sheets. AIIS staff will review the project sheets and will advise applicants to make changes where needed.

(revised 3/2009)

Examples of Successful Proposals

In order to assist applicants in preparing their applications, we are posting some project statements from successful fellowship applications from a few years ago. These statements are posted with the permission of the former (anonymous) AIIS fellows who wrote them. Following are successful project statements from a former junior fellow, a senior fellow and a performing/creative arts fellow:

Junior fellowship

The Textile Industry in the Early Modern Coromandel, 1500-1800

The textile industry thoroughly permeated and integrated the early modern Coromandel. It was an industry that encompassed a wide range of people and professions, including cotton farmers, spinners, weavers, merchants, brokers and consumers. The textile industry established material connections between distant places, from agrarian and weaving villages to Indian towns, ports and cities, to overseas markets. The Coromandel, extending from the coast into the eastern Deccan, can be characterized by these human and physical communities and the relationships between them. My research will study the cotton textile industry in the early modern Coromandel, between 1500 and 1800, and produce an integrated map of these communities of production and commerce.

The textile industry was a central part of South Asia’s social and economic history. A number of historians and other scholars have explored some basic issues in the history of the textile industry, illustrating its role in Coromandel society and economy. They have identified numerous artisan and merchant groups and located scores of villages, towns and ports that participated in the textile industry during the early modern period. Various studies have followed the changing conditions of the textile industry. In describing the sixteenth century, historians like Vijaya Ramaswamy and Jeyalseela Stephen have seen the beginning of the shift from interior states and temple-market complexes toward the expanding maritime trade of European companies. The seventeenth century seems to have been the peak of that trade as Coromandel cotton textiles were exported to markets across Asia, Europe and beyond. Historians like Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Tapan Raychaudhuri, and Joseph Brennig have emphasized the importance of textiles in the competition and exchanges between Indians and Europeans during this period. Scholarship on the eighteenth century has portrayed the rise of the English Company and the decline of the textile industry.

Several themes have animated contemporary scholarship on textiles and the textile industry. The comparative advantage of European and Indian merchants has been an important theme. Some historians, like K.N. Chaudhuri or Tapan Raychaudhuri, give great weight to European maritime trade, while others, like Sanjay Subrahmanyam, question its overall impact. The relationship between commerce and politics has been one of the most important issues in recent social and economic history writing. Many of the scholars mentioned have tried to establish the economic vitality of Indian states and point out the rational decisions they made to encourage industry and trade. The relationship between politics and commerce has also been central to the narrative of the decline of the textile industry under the English Company—state. Lastly, other studies have examined the complex relationship between industry and society, exploring connections between agriculture, industry and commerce, as well as the roles of artisans and merchants in religion, community and the state.

When examined as a body, this scholarship still produces a fragmented view of the textile industry through the early modern period. Few extensive works have focused entirely on the textile industry, resulting in an uneven set of studies on varying regions and periods. Both regionally and chronologically the treatment remains fragmentary, focusing on the primary maritime trading centers with an emphasis on the seventeenth century. My research will build n this existing scholarship in order to form an integrated picture of the communities that composed the textile industry throughout the early modern Coromandel. The groundwork is laid for an analysis of the textile industry throughout the entire Coromandel, from the border of Orissa to Cape Comorin, form 1500 to 1800.

But a systematic study of the social and physical communities that comprised the Coromandel textile industry has the potential to contribute much more to our understanding of early modern society and economy than simply filling in missing gaps in the scholarship. The textile industry cuts across the common boundaries that divide too much scholarship between agrarian and mercantile, or coastal and inland. My research will utilize a wide range of Indian and European sources to examine the entire process of textile production and commerce, from cotton to yarn to cloth to finished textiles. This research can help us understand the important interactions between social organizations and professional groups, the connections across rural and urban spaces, and the complex, changing relationships between agriculture, industry and commerce that characterized early modern South India.

My research will be organized thematically and geographically in an effort to mirror the industry itself. The textile industry created concrete exchanges between people and places, as cotton, yarn and cloth moved between hands and between communities. Those exchanges were basic to the relationships that connected the Coromandel’s social and economic networks. By following those concrete exchanges and constantly locating the people and places that participated in those exchanges, I will synthesize an integrated map of the early modern textile industry. I will identify the human communities that constituted the textile industry, the professional groups who produced and traded textiles and study the nature of those groups throughout the period. Previous studies have done some of this work, but much remains to be done, particularly regarding non-weaving artisans, such as spinners, bleachers, dyers and painters. Among the Coromandel’s diverse merchants, the myriad middlemen and brokers still remain vague categories in the scholarship as well. Next my research will locate the physical communities of industry over time. Various historians have identified scores of sites for the textile industry in different periods. But there is still no study that locates these sites during their periods of historical activity, examines how these sites were connected in productive and commercial networks, and shows how the industry shifted in space over time.

After identifying the people and places that constituted the textile industry, my research will follow the process of production and commerce through those human and physical communities. Following this process through the human communities of cotton farmers, spinners, weavers, finishers, brokers, merchants and consumers can help us understand the nature of these communities, the ways they were bounded and structured, as well as the ways they were interconnected. Similarly, following the parallel process through physical communities, from agrarian and weaving villages to markets, town, temple complexes, cities and ports can inform our understanding of the connections between rural and urban, agrarian and commercial.

My research will pursue an integrated view of what has been studied in fractured pieces in order to understand the early modern southern Indian society and economy through productive and commercial relationships. To understand this wide range of issues I will use archival and published Telugu documents, in addition to Dutch, English and Portuguese sources. My research in India will be preceded by six months of work in the Netherlands at the VOC Archive (Dutch East India Company) at The Hague, which houses a large collection of documents on Dutch activities in the Coromandel. In India, I will focus on the Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu State Archives in Hyderabad and Chennai, using Hyderabad for my primary residence. I intend to spend my first two months in Hyderabad’s archives, after which I will go to Chennai for two months (due to the reorganization of the states along linguistic lines, materials have been moved between the State Archives in Hyderabad and Chennai which will necessitate some flexibility in moving back and forth between the two). My fifth month will be spent back in Hyderabad examining the resources of the State Archives further and organizing a trip to important regional centers to the early modern textile industry. Beginning during my sixth month, I will explore the local district records of important regions of production, such as Krishna, Godavari and Coimbatore. I will complete my travel with several weeks exploring the records available in Delhi. My final two months of research will be spent back in Hyderabad, with visits to the archive in Chennai as necessary.

These archives contain epigraphical sources, the Mackenzie manuscripts, kaifiyats or local histories, and family histories in Telugu, as well as Company and colonial records in Dutch, English and Portuguese. Telugu and other Indian language sources can help us locate the industry in places where Company documents are silent, as well as inform our understanding of community during the early modern period. I plan to search through the large quantities of Telugu materials to find native descriptions of the communities of industry. Epigraphical sources are common through the sixteenth century. The Mackenzie manuscripts are a large collection of documents from small communities across southern India at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at the close of my period. These sources, which form chronological bookends to my research, can provide information about the changing communities that participated in the textile industry. These sources may reveal some important similarities and differences between weaving villages and agrarian villages, artisans and merchants, and rural and urban communities. They can also moderate the portrayal of Indian social and economic history which is so often centered on maritime, European records.

While the textile industry has been a constant topic of South Asian scholarship since the nationalists seized khadi as a central metaphor for Indian industry and British exploitation, the manifold ways that textiles are woven through South Asia’s society and economy have not been thoroughly examined. Textiles have too often been studied only as a commodity in research on merchants and ports. The early modern Coromandel was a dynamic region. The textile industry, which encompassed a huge number of social and physical communities throughout the Coromandel, can help us better understand the nature of Coromandel communities, the ways they were bounded and structured, as well as the ways they were interconnected. This view of Coromandel communities, organized by production and commerce, interconnected with each and connected to an expanding set of overseas markets, can help integrate some of the fragmented conceptions of South Indian history and society.

Senior Fellowship

Domestic Histories: Servants and Employers in Twentieth Century Calcutta

The other day my jamadar was standing in the kitchen and touched my cooking utensils, and when I told him not to do that, he snapped, ‘Why, aren’t we human’ Can you imagine that? (Interview, 70 year-old female employer, 1999).

The stigmatized institution of paid domestic labor has long formed the mainstay of Indian middle class existence, yet is curiously absent in studies of India. This project explores the significance of the institution of domestic servitude both for the family and for twentieth century Indian social life. It takes as its premise that the relations of domestic servitude are fundamentally constitutive of the societies of which they are a part, crossing over from the private sphere to shape civil society.

Recent studies of domestic work and domestic workers have flourished in countries with histories of racial inequality and immigration such as the U.S. and Britain (Milkman et. al. 1998; Rollins, 1985; Romero, 1992) as well as in countries with histories of colonial settlements such as South Africa and Zimbabwe (Hansen, 1992; Cock, 1980). Given India’s colonial history, tradition of caste-based work, and slavery (Chatterjee, 199); Patnaik and Dingwaney (eds), 1985) the absence of serious analysis of domestic work is thus doubly surprising. This project asks: First, what imprint has the institution of domestic servitude had on the lives of both servants and employers in the course of the twentieth century? Second, what are the societal implications of pervasive servile labor relations based on custom in a period governed by contractual wage labor?

Domestic servitude bridges the private-public divide, bringing social relations of power (class, caste, gender) into the household, mirroring and reproducing these relations within the domestic unit. At the same time, in dialectical relation, the racial/ethnic, class and gender dynamics of the household are manifested in the public sphere of polity and economy. After all, it is in the crucible of the family and the household where children first learn about power, domination, and inequality—the ‘facts of life’ that they employ to understand and act in the world as they grow into adult citizens. Just as feminism and the political participation of women pose challenges for the theory and practice of democracy, so too should the continued presence of servile household labor challenge the nature of class, gender, caste and citizenship in contemporary India.

In this study, I will examine the changes in the relations of domestic servitude as experienced, perceived, and narrated by servants/domestic workers and their employers in Calcutta, India. I will also examine the effects of the institution on the household and on understandings of inequality and hierarchy.

Why Calcutta?

The caste system in India varies from region to region as did practices of feudalism and therefore, to some extent, the practices of British colonialism. A focus on one region enables a more grounded reading of the practices of domestic servitude. Calcutta is a particularly interesting site for the investigation of relations of servitude for several reasons. First, the region of Bengal, in which Calcutta is situated, has had a rich and elaborated feudal tradition, about which much has been written. Some of Bengal’s (and India’s) finest writers—Rabindranath Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chattapadhyay, and Mahasweta Devi—have written powerfully about feudal worlds and about domestic servants within those feudal worlds. Second, Calcutta was a major imperial center and home not only to many Anglo-Indian settlers who have left rich accounts of domestic life in the Raj, but also to an Indian middle class self-consciously shaped by particular colonial experiences. Third, while Calcutta has a long feudal tradition, as a major industrial city it serves as a hub for young men and women from the villages who want to do domestic work as a stepping stone to being integrated into Calcutta’s working class. Thus in Calcutta one can find all the four major types of domestic workers—old family retainers, live-in workers, day workers and part-timers.

Research Questions

Two research questions guide this study. First, to what extent have the social relations of servitude changed between mid-century Calcutta and today? Second, what is the significance of these changes for relationships within the household, particularly for the rearing of children and for the relationship of an employing couple? Let me address each question in turn.

I) In what way has the perception of servants and service been altered between mid-century Calcutta and today in the context of three major societal changes over the last fifty years—colonial rule to independent nation-state, feudal to developing capitalist economy, and intensified rural to urban migration. That there has been a certain change is indicated by the shift in nomenclature from jhi and chakor to kaajer lok, that is, from maidservant and servant to domestic worker. While all four categories of domestic workers identified above exist in Calcutta today, the numbers of part-time workers are on the increase while there are few family retainers left. A distinct relationship of servitude, with particular norms, expectations and obligations can be associated with each type of servant. Thus though on the decline, the family retainer most closely approximates the ideal of myth and memory and embodies the standard of servitude against which employers compare servants. The existence of day workers and part-timers, on the other hand, may bring into question the definition of servant, since they seem to have more control over their own labor. To what extent are servants in the late twentieth century becoming workers under the pressures of urban, capitalist forces? What effect does their move towards being workers have on middle class understandings of the household and of middle-classness? What does it mean to be a domestic worker rather than a servant? Does this shift affect the caste-based distribution of tasks? Indeed, what does it mean to have a domestic worker, rather than a servant, work for you?

Based on preliminary research, I hypothesize that both employers’ and servants’ discourses about the relation contain significant vestiges of the intimate, patriarchal world of the extended family and feudal household, while at the same time desiring to arrive at a ‘modern’ conception and practice of the ‘impersonal’ employer-employee relationship. Caught in a moment of transition, servants and employers selectively use discourses of modernity, custom and tradition to make claims and to address counter-claims.

II) Within the household, the servant (whether male or female) most often takes on the gendered duties of women—child and elder care, cooking, cleaning and laundry. This raises questions for two sets of relationships. The first is the relationship of servants to children and the second is the relationship between husband and wife. A) What do we learn about the changing practices of child-rearing from families which employ other people to take care of their children? How are children taught to treat servants? At what point do middle-class children learn that servants are different from themselves, that is, neither members of the family nor like them? How does the very real love and dependence children feel for their caretakers come to be overshadowed by relations of power and domination? I will argue that the household is the site where domination is first encountered and learned. If that is the case, what happens to understandings of authority and dominations as family retainers give way to day and then part-time workers? A further layer of complexity is introduced when servants who are still children themselves take care of children. B) What does the presence of domestic servants mean for the relationship of an employing couple? I am especially concerned with women employers—both those who work outside the home and those who do not—their relationship with their partners, and how their situations have changed over the course of the century. To what extent has the growth in women’s labor force participation led to a crisis of social reproduction in middle class households? Writing about India, Sangari (1999) points to the ‘class maintaining/maximizing function of domestic labour.’ My working hypothesis is that the presence of domestic servants in the household, particularly where both the man and the woman work, mitigates the gender conflict that would otherwise have arisen over the domestic division of labor. And while the triangulated relationship between husband, wife and domestic is by no means unidimensional, class privilege ultimately protects gender privilege. For this reason, relations of gender within the middle-class household have shifted less than they otherwise would have done. That is also why, I suspect, unlike the women’s movement in the U.S., the domestic division of labor has not been a major issue for the women’s movement in India.

Methodology

The research methods for this project are primarily interviews and oral histories supported by archival documentation. Secondarily, I include analyses of the depictions of relations of domestic servitude in novels, images and film. The oral history approach permits a far better approach to the changes from ‘feudal’ to ‘modern’ ideology, relations and practices than other more conventional historical methods. Since it is conducive to a more intimate understanding of the private-public divide, the oral history methodology allows me to represent how people themselves understand transitions in their lifetimes and in their families.

I have already undertaken a preliminary round of research. During the seven months for which I am asking for support, I intend to do the following:

1) Gather oral histories from lower-middle, middle and upper-middle class employers (fifteen each) and servants who are family retainers, first generation live-ins, day workers and part-timers (ten each). I intend to divide these interviews between north and south Calcutta in order to reach both older indigenous and newer cosmopolitan elites and middle classes.

2) Gather archival material, which will include censuses and other demographic information, newspapers, housekeeping manuals and women’s magazines. This archival material will yield information both about demographic shifts and about how the ‘servant question’ has been debated in public. The specific archives of relevance in Calcutta are the West Bengal Archives, the National Library and the National Sample Survey Organization. Newspapers include The Statesman and Ananda Bazaar Patrika.

3) Collect fiction, memoirs and films which are valuable sources for the representation of the relations of domestic servitude both for earlier periods and the present.

I expect to start writing upon my return from India.

Significance of the Project

Writing about Victorian England, Leonore Davidoff argues that that social divisions are most clearly revealed in the reproductive sphere, and thus the household should constitute a primary unit of analysis. For feminist theorists, the household has formed a primary unit of analysis, but rarely as a site of paid labor. This project will bring to the fore the all important, yet rarely studied, institution of paid domestic labor in terms of its consequences both for the household and our understanding of civil society. Because domestic servitude complicates the divide between family and work, custom and contract, affection and duty, the home and the world, it provides a standpoint from which to interrogate historical transitions and received assumptions about the nature and functioning of society, economy and polity. This study of household servants in contemporary India will thus force us to rethink the nature of class, gender, caste and citizenship.

Performing/Creative Arts Fellowship

Carnatic Music on the Double Bass

I am requesting a Senior Performing Arts fellowship to enable me to engage in nine months of intensive study of Carnatic music in Southern India. The goal of my project is four-fold: 1) to further develop skill in performing Carnatic violin music on my instrument, the double bass (bass violin), by studying with leading Carnatic violin master Mr. Lalgudi Jairaman and to perform often with other Carnatic musicians (violin, vina, mridangam). Mr. Jairaman has agreed to teach me during the grant period; 2) to learn specific Carnatic compositions and techniques for Carnatic improvisation, and incorporate these in my traditional western recitals. This will introduce Carnatic music to a broader audience in the West; 3) to explore ways of combing elements of improvised Carnatic music, improvised American Jazz, and Western Classical music to develop a new style of improvisation which is a synthesis of these three different musical styles; 4) to compare new works (fully notated compositions) for the double bass which combine elements of Carnatic music (ragas, talas, bhava, and specific composed songs, e.g., compositions by Saint Tyagaraja) and Western Classical music (harmony and musical form, e.g., J.S. Bach and Mozart) and Jazz (rhythm and harmony). My intention is to compose works which I and other professional western double bassists will find interesting and exciting to perform.

To the best of my knowledge, I am the first double bassist to explore the synthesis of Carnatic music and western music. This cross-cultural artistic project will add a new kind of music to the concert repertoire for double bass. Introducing the double bass in the performance of Carnatic music may also have important implications for music in India itself (the western violin played with Indian tunings is a central instrument in Carnatic music, although it was introduced only a little more than 100 years ago). In 1998 I studied for five weeks in India with Carnatic violinist Bala Subramaniam. At the beginning of my studies, Mr. Bala Subramaniam had strong reservations about the feasibility of performing Carnatic music on the double bass. As our work progressed, he heard how well the violin and double bass work together, and he became very enthusiastic about the depth of sound and increased musical possibilities the addition of the double bass provides to the performance of Carnatic music. The important discoveries we made concerning the adaptability of the double bass to the performance of Carnatic music are as follows:

1) The double bass is a versatile instrument, capable of both solo and accompanying roles. It has almost a four octave pitch range and is able to play three octaves below the violin, as well as in the violin range. The two instruments complement each other in exciting and interesting ways. They can play the same melody either in unison or separated by one or more octaves, making possible tremendous power of musical expression. When playing in a call-and-response style, the dialogue between the two solo instruments is easy to follow due to their contrasting tone colors and registers. When the double bass assumes the role of accompanying the violin, it usually plays in a lower register than the violin. Yet because of its capacity for soloistic virtuosity, the double bass can play accompaniment music which is melodically interesting and source of musical ideas for the violin. The double bass can even assume the role of the tambura, providing the simple drone accompaniment traditionally used in performance of Carnatic music.

2) The sound of the bowed double bass is expressive, beautiful, warm and exceptional in its capacity to imitate the human singing voice. Its range spans the high female voice to the low male voice.

3) Because I am trained in Western music, my Carnatic improvisations include aspects of Western music such as a Western approach to thematic development and interest in harmony. These Western ideas which I bring to a violin/double bass performance necessarily provide the Carnatic violinist with many new ideas.

While my work is pioneering new possibilities for the double bass in the field of music in the West, hopefully it will have an impact in India as well. Considering the possibilities and strengths of the double bass as both a solo and accompanying instrument, it is my hope that Indian musicians will be inspired to explore further the use of the double bass in Carnatic performance.

My first exposure to Carnatic music came when I heard Carnatic violinist Bala Subramaniam perform while I was on a sabbatical trip to India in 1997. I was fascinated by the beauty of the melodic lines, the intricacies of the improvisations, and the intensely personal expression which I felt I his performance. Since then, I have found strong parallels between Carnatic music performance and my own approach to playing the double bass.

Carnatic music is of particular interest to me because it is essentially a vocal tradition. In Carnatic music there is essentially no distinction between vocal and instrumental concert repertoires; the instrument is treated as a voice. My approach to playing the double bass has long been rooted in imitating the lyrical and expressive characteristics of singing. I strive to mimic as closely as I can the sound, inflections, phrasings, vibrato, and tonal support used by singers. In my lessons with Bala Subramaniam, I had to listen to and sing back the music he played on the violin. When I was successful singing accurately, I then was able to play the music on the double bass. A large portion of my learning thus involved being able to identify and remember what he presented, and to imitate him with my own personal expressiveness.

Improvisation is an integral part of my performing, and my skills as a Jazz improviser serve me very well as I learn the Carnatic style. My interest in Carnatic music also stems from its strong improvisational component. Both improvisation and the rendition of pre-composed pieces play important roles in Carnatic musical performances. I appreciate improvised Carnatic music, particularly because it provides a unique musical way of speaking about some of the more sublime human emotions, such as beauty, joy, yearning and love.

My creative efforts for many years have been directed towards developing a unique voice as a double bass soloist. In the last four years I have begun to rely more and more on performing compositions which I have written. These works combine aspects of traditional styles of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music along with aspects of the uniquely American form of music I love to play—Jazz. I recognize in Carnatic music a wealth of new possibilities which I can use to compose new and exiting works for double bass—works which both I and other professional double bassists will want to perform.

Learning Carnatic music presents significant challenges for me as a Western Classical musician. First of all, I have grown up with Western Classical music, which is primarily limited to two scales (ragas)—the major and minor scales. In Carnatic music I have begun to learn some of the well over 80 ragas, which include basic ragas and variations thereof. As a creative artist (performer and composer), this has been an exciting process for me because each raga is associated with a very specific human emotion. I have had to examine the structure of each raga in order to gain an understanding of the notes which are most important for conveying aspects of each specific mood. The challenge this presents me as a Western musician is that not only do I have to develop a command of the theoretical aspects of the raga, but I must also develop the necessary expressive understanding in order to convey successfully the underlying emotion of the raga to the audience.

The second significant challenge in learning Carnatic music has to do with the way in which it is taught. Unlike our Western tradition, the transmission of repertory and performing practice of Carnatic music is achieved almost entirely through aural instruction. Learning a Carnatic song requires that the student first be able to sing the song with all of its embellishments (ornaments) perfectly before being permitted to play it on the instrument. Notation is used mainly as an aid to memory, not for the dissemination of written compositions. As a Western musician, I have almost always relied on reading musical notation to learn music, both Classical music and Jazz. Mr. Bala Subramaniam taught exclusively by ear. This process of learning Carnatic music, which has proven to be both strenuous and time consuming, has required me to use different cognitive skills than I have previously had to use learning Western Classical music. It has become clear to me that the only way to develop the high level Carnatic improvisation skills is to study for an extended period of time with a master.

In August 1998 and again in December, I traveled to India with my double bass to spend a total of five weeks studying with Bala Subramaniam. Working with Bala Subramaniam was very productive and inspiring, and has opened my eyes and ears to a vast world of creative possibilities for my instrument. It is clear to me, though, that I have barely begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities this music has to offer. Mr. Bala Subramaniam has urged me to go to Madras so that I can immerse myself for an extended period of time in its rich musical environment. Living there, I will study with Mr. Lalgudi Jairaman and perform frequently with some of the multitude of violinists, vina players, tabla players and singers living there, immediately putting into practice what I learn in private lessons. The outcome of my work will include being able to perform specific works from the Carnatic repertoire, as well as becoming skilled in the techniques of Carnatic improvisation. My research and study will also be devoted to notating major Carnatic compositions and collecting musical ideas which I can use in my own composition of new works for the double bass which combine aspects of Indian Carnatic music with Western Classical music and Jazz.

My interest in learning Carnatic music has led me to such scholarly works as Bonnie Wade’s “Music in India,” C.R. Day’s “The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan,” Josef Kuckertz “Form and Melodiebildung der Karnatischen Musk Sudindiens,” and the current authoritative text used to teach Carnatic music at the University of Madras—A.S. Panchapakesa Iyer’s ‘Ganamrutha Bodhini.’ With my growing interest and excitement about the possibilities Carnatic music holds for me as a performer, I have recognized the tremendous amount of ground work which I must first do in order to develop a firm foundation of the fundamentals of this music. Three months ago I was very fortunate to begin weekly lessons with [name deleted] a student of Mr. Lalgudi Jairaman. We are systematically working through A. S. Panchapakesa Iyer’s ‘Ganamrutha Bodhini,’ the book she herself used to learn Carnatic music. I am learning the theories and practice of Ragas, Thalam, and general history of the Carnatic tradition, which while connected with greater Indian music, has a theory and history its own. My goal for the coming twelve months is to develop mastery of the theoretical and historical fundamentals of Carnatic music, thus preparing me to be able to work on more sophisticated aspects of Carnatic music performance during my AIIS grant period in India.

In February 1999 I had my first opportunity to share Carnatic music on the double bass with leaders in the growing filed of improvised music. I was one of the guest artists (the only bassist, along with seven violinists) at a national conference on improvised music being sponsored by the American String Teachers Association. My session was entitled ‘Improvised Carnatic violin music played on the double bass.’

Toward the conclusion of my stay in India, I intend to record a CD in collaboration with my Indian colleagues and mentors. Included in this recording will be works which explore a new synthesis between Carnatic and Western music. I also will write articles about my work for the International Society of Bassists Journal and the American String Teachers Association Journal. I plan to perform my Carnatic-inspired music at the next International Society of Bassists convention.

The following reflects the monthly calculations for AIIS Fellowship awards for the 2007-2008 award year:

Senior Long-term (includes Scholarly Development & Performing Arts)

Maintenance stipend per month  Rs 48,300

Research and travel per month  Rs 18,900

Dollar supplement per month  $115

Per dependent allowance per month  Rs 8,400

Senior Short-term

Maintenance stipend per month  Rs 53,130

Research and travel per month  Rs 18,900

Dollar supplement per month  $126

Junior

Maintenance stipend per month  Rs 29,400

Research and travel per month  Rs 12,600

Dollar supplement per month  $70

Per dependent allowance per month  Rs 8,400

Fellows who will be based in Bangalore, Chennai (Madras), Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai (Bombay) or New Delhi will receive an additional 15% cost of living supplement for the maintenance, dollar supplements and dependent's allowance. The dollar supplement, for the total number of months of the fellowship, will be paid in full to fellows prior to their departure for India. As part of their award, Fellows will also receive one round-trip airplane ticket from their city of origin to their primary research site in India. AIIS will also purchase tickets for 1.5 dependents accompanying Long-term Fellows only with a dependent maintenance allowance for up to 2 dependents. Short-term Fellows are not provided tickets or allowance for dependents.

IMPORTANT:
Please read the information below.
It is critical to the understanding of your AIIS Fellowship, its provisions and its limitations.

INSURANCE OPTIONS:

All AIIS Fellows must carry health insurance that cover them while in India and in the United States. AIIS Fellows who are faculty members at American colleges and universities most often carry a comprehensive health and accident insurance which will cover the Fellow and accompanying dependents while overseas. The Institute advises Fellows who have this sort of complete coverage (please check with your respective insurance representative) to maintain it rather than enroll in other programs. The Institute also strongly urges that accompanying dependents be covered by a comprehensive health and accident plan while in India.

Also, all AIIS fellows are required to be covered by the Institutes Medical Evacuation policy, which costs $4.80 for each month or part thereof that the Fellow plans to be out of the country. Medical Evacuation Insurance may also be purchased through the Institute for accompanying dependents. Fellows may buy insurance in India to cover personal effects. Ask for detailed information from the Director-General in New Delhi upon your arrival in India.

Senior fellows who are NOT affiliated with any of the AIIS member institutions will be required to pay an administrative fee before commencing their fellowships. Senior short-term fellows would pay $250 and Senior long-term fellows would pay $500. Junior fellows do not have to pay the administrative fee.

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