RECENT STUDIES ON INDIAN WOMEN

This volume, which is an Indo-American academic venture, contains 18 theoretically innovative and empirically penetrating essays, including an introductory chapter. The contributors to the volume are distinguished scholars from the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, political science, population studies, economics, English literature, geography, economics, etc., with a sustained interest in gender studies in the Indian context. Therefore, multi-disciplinarity with empirically grounded research is the greatest strength of this volume. The volume contains chapters which can cater to the academic needs of scholars having interest on gender issues in India, no matter what is their academic training and background. Some of the chapters in the volume are the down-to-earth experiences of the contributors that have immense policy-oriented import. The issues covered in the volume are wide-ranging as are the expertise of its contributors, which include the philosophy of ideal womanhood, issues of women’s empowerment, legal dimensions of widowhood, paternalism and domestic violence, images of matriliny, literary and political dimensions of gender, dalit and tribal women and their varied perceptions vis-á-vis other Indian women, scientists and entrepreneurs, matrimonial preferences, marriage timings, politics of population control, and so on. The volume will be of special interest equally to students, researchers and policy makers on gender.

Kamal K. Misra, is Professor and former Head of the Department of Anthropology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. Dr. Misra is the recipient of the Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship (1996-97) and the Fulbright Fellowship (2003-04). Earlier he taught at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar; the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad; and at Austin College, Texas, USA as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence. He specializes in Environmental Anthropology, Anthropological Linguistics, Theory in Anthropology, and of late, Anthropology of Gender. His publications include six books and over 50 research papers published in national and international journals, and anthologies.

Janet Huber Lowry, is Associate Professor of Sociology and former Dean of Social Sciences at Austin College, in Sherman, Texas, USA. She had her academic training in Mathematics at Hanover College in Indiana; and Sociology for both MA and PhD at UNC-Chapel Hill where she specialized in research methods and demography. As a teacher she has offered courses in aging, demography, gender, Indian society, marriage and family, research methods, statistics, and work. Most of her research has been in community service and social gerontology.