UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG

Dilip Menon

Dilip Menon
Qualifications:B.A.(Honours) History, University of Delhi and PhD (History), University of Cambridge
Email:dilip.menon@wits.ac.za
Organisational Unit:Faculty of Humanities

B rief Professional History

Studied in Delhi, Oxford (Balliol) and Cambridge (Trinity) and was a Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge before returning to India to take up teaching posts and fellowships in Trivandrum, Hyderabad and Delhi. Have held post doctoral and teaching positions at Cambridge, Yale, ZMO (Berlin)and MSH (Paris). Published three books and several articles on caste, socialism and modernity in India. Currently the Mellon Chair in Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand.

Teaching and Supervision

Have taught courses at undergraduate level (Yale and Cambridge) on modern Indian history and at graduate level (Yale, Hyderabad and Delhi) on Europe, China and Japan, Modern India and Historiography. Supervised 9 M.Phil. and three PhD dissertations o n modern India. Currently supervising 2 PhDs on Dubai as a global city and Islam and its mediation through technology

Selected Publications

Books

Caste, nationalism and communism in south India: Malabar, 1900-1948 (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Saraswativijayam (Book Review Literary Trust, New Delhi 2002). Translation of Potheri Kunhambu’s novel of 1893 from Malayalam.

The blindness of insight: Essays on caste in modern India (Chennai: Navayana, 2006)

EditedThe cultural history of Modern India (Delhi: Social Sciences Press and London: Berghahn, 2006

Articles

“The Blindness of Insight: Why Communalism in India is about Caste”, in T.N.Srinivasan ed. The future of Secularism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006) reprinted in Indian Political Thought: A Reader ed. Akash Rathore and Silika Mohapatra (Delhi: Routledge, 2010)

“A Local Cosmopolitan: Kesari Balakrishna Pillai and the invention of Europe for Kerala”, in Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra ed. Cosmopolitan Thought Zones (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

“Un Cosmopolitisme local”, in Pascale Casanova ed. Des litteratures combatives: L’internationale des nationalisms litteraires (Paris: Raisons d’Agir, 2011)

Translation from the Malayalam of K. Baburaj, “Subjectivity, Otherness, Language”, in K.Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu, No Alphabet in Sight: new Dalit writing from South India (Delhi: Penguin, 2011)