Susan Snow Wadley

Susan Snow Wadley (born 1943) is an American anthropologist.

Susan Snow Wadley
Born1943[1]
NationalityAmerican[1]
OccupationAnthropologist
Board member ofPublications Committee of American Institute of Indian Studies (Chairperson)
Spouse(s)Rick Olanoff
Parent(s)Ellen (mother)[2]
Academic background
EducationDoctor of Philosophy
Alma materCarlton College (B.A.)
University of Chicago (M.A. and Ph.D.)
ThesisShakti: Power in the Conceptual Structure of Karimpur Religion (1973)
Academic advisorsMcKim Marriott
Milton Singer
(Initial research advisors)
Academic work
DisciplineAnthropology
InstitutionsFormer director, South Asia Center of the Syracuse University
Main interestsSouth Asia, specially India[3]

Born in 1943, she completed her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1967 and 1973, respectively. She has worked at the Syracuse University as a professor of South Asian Studies and the former director of its South Asia Center. She has carried out numerous field studies in India over a period of nearly 6 decades with financial support by various entities from the United States.

Family

Wadley is married to Rick Olanoff, and they have 4 daughters.[4]

Education

Wadley did her B.A. from the Carlton College in the field of psychology.[2] She did her M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1967 with the thesis titled "'Fate' and the Gods in the Panjabi Cult of Gugga: A Structural Semantic Analysis".[5] At the University of Chicago, she also completed her Ph.D. in anthropology in 1973.[6] Her doctoral dissertation was titled Shakti: Power in the Conceptual Structure of Karimpur Religion.[7] It was an analysis and collection of a north India village's stories and songs.[8]

Career

Wadley is a Ford–Maxwell professor emerita of South Asian Studies at the Department of Anthropology of the Syracuse University.[9][10] She is the former director of the university's South Asia Center.[11] She has also served as the associate dean of the university's Department of Arts and Sciences.[2]

She is the present chairperson of the publications committee of the American Institute of Indian Studies and also of the board of directors of the South Asian Summer Language Institute.[4] She has been a board member of the Open Hand Theatre for nearly 2 decades and had also served as the theatre's president.[2]

Research

The focus of Wadley's studies has been mainly on the study of folklore, folk art traditions, gender issues, religion, and social change in India.[10] Her research interests also includes the study of the affects of the "socioeconomic change" on the female populace of northern India's countryside areas.[6] Rutgers University's Michael Moffatt notes that Wadley is one of the few anthropologists who write monographs on the villages of India.[12] She also have interest in the fields of language, culture and society, and globalization.[9]

She began her anthropological research on India by receiving research grant from the Carnegie Foundation and working in the guidance of McKim Marriott and Milton Singer. Later, her research was funded by the entities like the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the United States Department of Education.[13] In 1989, she received a grant for the post doctoral fellowship from the Social Science Research Council.[9]

She executed numerous research projects as part of her field research in India which includes Attitudes Towards Girls' Education in a Village Near Delhi (1963–1964), Religious Ideologies and Practices in Karimpur, Uttar Pradesh (1967–1969), The Modernization and Standardization of Hindu Religious Practices in Hindi–speaking North India (1974–1975), Changing Lives: Karimpur Villagers 1925–1984 (1983–1984), The North Indian Epic Dhola (1989, 1990, and 1994), Social Change and Globalization in Rural Uttar Pradesh (1998), Social Change and Oral Epics in Rural Uttar Pradesh (2002), Rural–urban Connections, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi (2005), Social Change in Rural Uttar Pradesh (2010), Mithila Folk Art, Madhubani, Bihar (2010–2011).[9]

Written work

Wadley's Struggling with Destiny in Karimpur, 1925–1984 (1994) was a monographic study of a north Indian village. Moffatt stated that the ethnosociological work done by Wadley was shaped by McKim Marriott's influence on her. Her research on the subject matter was supplemented by the large "unpublished data" which she had received from Charlotte Viall Wiser and William H. Wiser. According to Moffatt, Wadley's work was an "attempt to condense the rich, multi–investigative, long–term research into a single comprehensive account".[12]

Wadley wrote Raja Nal and the Goddess: The North Indian Epic Dhola in Performance (2004) after over 3 decades of "researching and recording" Dhola, an oral epic which is performed in northwestern and northern regions of India and has some goddesses, women and a king named Nal as its heroes. She also did field study in a village in India for her research data. Sadhana Naithani of the Jawaharlal Nehru University noted that Wadley conducted her research on the epic at a time when the it is dying out. She stated that though Wadley realized that "Dhola lives in performance", she could not "capture the dynamism of the performance context". According to Naithani, Wadley's "retelling" of the epic was "vastly condensed" which was itself "based on another condensed version".[14]

Wadley's Essays in North Indian Folk Traditions (2005) was "an analysis of the oral traditions" of an Indian village.[15] Her work in the book was based on the field research carried out by her in the village between 1967 and 2002 and the earlier ethnographic research done by the Wisers.[16] Archana Shukla of the University of Delhi stated that Wadley provided "primary and secondary data" and inquired into and compared "the realms of oral and written folk traditions".[15] According to Fabrizio M. Ferrari, Wadley individuated "major issues in the dramatic representation of local epics and their relation with the written Sanskrit tradition".[16]

The village Karimpur of India's Uttar Pradesh which is mentioned in her published works is a pseudonym used by her in place of the real name of the village where she carried out her research.[14][16]

Works

Books
  • Wadley, Susan S. (1994). Struggling with Destiny in Karimpur, 1925–1984 (illustrated ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. LCCN 93048297.
  • Wadley, Susan S.; Jacobson, Doranne (1992). Women in India: Two Perspectives (3rd, enlarged ed.). New Delhi: Manohar. LCCN 92909252.
  • Wadley, Susan S. (2004). Raja Nal and the Goddess: The North Indian Epic Dhola in Performance (illustrated ed.). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. LCCN 2004009434.

Books edited
  • Wadley, Susan S., ed. (2014). South Asia in the World: An Introduction. Foundations in Global Studies: The Regional Landscape. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. LCCN 2013021142.
  • Wadley, Susan S.; Babb, Lawrence A., eds. (1995). Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia (illustrated ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812215478. LCCN 95013168.
  • Wadley, Susan S., ed. (1980). The Powers of Tamil Women. Foreign and Comparative Studies: South Asian Series; No. 6. Syracuse, New York: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. LCCN 80025410.

Selected papers

References
  1. "Wadley, Susan Snow (1943–....)". Bibliothèque nationale de France (in French). Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  2. "Maxwell's Susan Wadley honored by Open Hand Theater". Syracuse University. Retrieved October 1, 2020.
  3. "Susan S. Wadley | AMESA". Columbia University. New York. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  4. "Awards and Recognition: Reunion 2015". Carleton College. Northfield, Minnesota. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  5. Murphy, Anne (2017) [First published 2016]. "Uses of the Folk: Cultural Historical Practice and the Guga Tradition". In Nayar, Rana; Syal, Pushpinder; Kumar, Akshaya (eds.). Cultural Studies in India. p. 197. ISBN 978-1351570374.
  6. Wadley, Susan S. (2001). "Hindu Women's Family and Household Rites in a North Indian Village". In Falk, Nancy Auer; Gross, Rita M. (eds.). Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives (3, illustrated ed.). Belmont, California, US: Thomson Learning. p. 103. ISBN 978-0534515706. LCCN 00033410. Susan S. Wadley, Ford Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University, received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1973. Her research interests range from women's ritual and folklore to regional epic traditions to socioeconomic change, especially as it affects women in rural north India.
  7. Marriott, McKim, ed. (1990). "About the Contributors". India Through Hindu Categories (illustrated ed.). SAGE. p. 204. ISBN 978-8170361763. Her doctoral dissertation (at Chicago in 1973) is the book Shakti: power in the conceptual structure of Karimpur religion.
  8. Yü, Chün-fang (2020). The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Zhuhong and the Late Ming Synthesis. The Sheng Yen Series in Chinese Buddhist Studies. Daniel B. Stevenson. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231552677. Susan Snow Wadley collected and analyzed stories and songs of a North Indian village called Karimpur in Shakti: Power in the Conceptual Structure of Karimpur Religion.
  9. "Susan Snow Wadley | Professor Emerita, Anthropology". Syracuse University. Syracuse, New York. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  10. "Lecture: Susan Wadley, From Powerful Goddesses to Modern Women: Mithila's Artists Paint for the 21st Century". University of Tennessee. Knoxville, Tennessee. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  11. Van Hollen, Cecilia (Spring 2011). "From the Director's Desk". South Asia Center Newsletter. South Asia Center, Moynihan Institution of Global Affairs, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. p. 1. Retrieved October 1, 2020. It has been a tremendous honor to begin my tenure as the new Director of the South Asia Center, following the many years of inspired and tireless leadership of my predecessors, Susan Wadley and Ann Gold.
  12. Moffatt, Michael (March 1996). "Village and Personal Agency in South Asia (Reviewed Works: Struggling with Destiny in Karimpur 1925–1984 by Susan S. Wadley; Public Faces, Private Voices: Community and Individuality in South India by Mattison Mines)". American Anthropologist. New. Wiley. 98 (1): 172–174. doi:10.1525/aa.1996.98.1.02a00230. ISSN 0002-7294. JSTOR 682970.
  13. Wadley, Susan S. (2008). "In Search of the Hindu "Peasants'" Subjectivity". India Review. Taylor & Francis. 7 (4, Covering India). Notes. doi:10.1080/14736480802548053. S2CID 143931150.
  14. Naithani, Sadhana (2009). Haase, Donald; Barchilon, Jacques; Duggan, Anne E.; Bacchilega, Cristina; et al. (eds.). "Reviewed Work: Raja Nal and the Goddess: The North Indian Epic Dhola in Performance by Susan Snow Wadley". Marvels & Tales. Detroit, Michigan, US: Wayne State University Press. 23 (2): 404–406. ISSN 1521-4281. JSTOR 41388935.
  15. Shukla, Archana (January–December 2006). Channa, Subhadra; Mehrotra, Nilika; Singh, Manoj Kumar; Gaur, Mokshika (eds.). "Reviewed Work: Essays on North Indian Folk Traditions by Susan S. Wadley". Indian Anthropologist. Indian Anthropological Association. 36 (1/2, Special Issue on Folk Narratives): 164–167. ISSN 0970-0927. JSTOR 41920012.
  16. Ferrari, Fabrizio M. (2006). "Reviewed Work: Essays in North Indian Folk Traditions by Susan S. Wadley". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Cambridge University Press. 69 (3): 481–483. doi:10.1017/S0041977X06340219. ISSN 0041-977X. JSTOR 20182090.
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