14.139.123.36 at 17:35, 30 August 2021

2021-08-30T17:35:19Z

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{{Infobox scientist
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| name = Ramya Sreenivasan
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| nationality = Indian
| fields = English, Early modern Indian history
| workplaces = University of Pennsylvania
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| alma_mater = [[University of Delhi]], [[Jawaharlal Nehru University]]
| thesis_title = Gender, Literature, History: The Transformation of the Padmini Story
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| thesis_year = 2002
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| awards = [[Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy]] Prize (2009)
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'''Ramya Sreenivasan''' (born 1966) is an Indian scholar of English and early modern Indian history. She is an [[Associate Professor]] in the Department of History at the [[University of Pennsylvania]]. She was originally appointed in the Department of South Asian Studies in 2009.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://almanac.upenn.edu/articles/2021-mellon-fellows}}</ref> Best known for her book ''The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen'', she is a winner of the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize.

==Biography==
Ramya Sreenivasan obtained her BA in English in 1988, followed by an MA in English two years later, both from the [[University of Delhi]]. In 2002, she received a PhD in English from the [[Jawaharlal Nehru University]] in New Delhi.<ref name=ub>{{cite journal|journal=UB Reporter|volume=36|number=32|author=Irene Liguori|title=Interest in South Asian history grows|url=http://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/archive/vol36/vol36n32/articles/Sreenivasan.html|date=5 May 2005|accessdate=29 October 2017}}</ref> Her dissertation was titled ''Gender, Literature, History: The Transformation of the Padmini Story''.<ref name="Behl2016">{{cite book|author=Aditya Behl|title=Love's Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379-1545|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HR6hDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT471|year=2016|publisher=Oxford University|isbn=978-0-19-062882-6|page=471}}</ref>

==Career==
Between 1991 and 1998, Sreenivasan was a lecturer in the Department of English at [[Miranda House]], University of Delhi.<ref>{{cite web|publisher=Miranda House|title=Former Staff|url=http://mirandahouse.ac.in/thecollege/historicalperspective/formerstaff.php|accessdate=9 November 2017}}</ref>

Sreenivasan was a visiting lecturer of history at the [[University of Washington, Seattle]], and [[Kenyon College]], Ohio, between 2003 and 2004. She then joined the [[State University of New York, Buffalo]].

===Research===
Dr. Seeenivasan's doctoral thesis entitled 'Gender, Literature, History: The Transformation of the Padmini Story' was supervised by Prof. G.J.V. Prasad at the [https://www.jnu.ac.in/sllcs/cl Centre of Linguistics and English], School of Languages, at [[Jawaharlal Nehru University]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sreenivasan |first1=Ramya |title=Gender, Literature, History |url=https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/29126 |website=Shodhganga: a reservoir of Indian theses |publisher=INFLIBNET |accessdate=9 May 2020}}</ref> Rani Padmini, the supposed 14th-century queen of the [[Rajput]] kingdom of [[Chittor]] – it is not clear if she ever existed<ref name="Talbot2015">{{cite book|author=Cynthia Talbot|title=The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Cauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m3DjCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA24|year=2015|publisher=Cambridge University|isbn=978-1-107-11856-0|page=24}}</ref> – had committed [[jauhar]] rather than be captured by the invading [[Alauddin Khalji]], the Sultan of Delhi. Padmini stood for the Rajput ideal of self-sacrificing bravery, mythologised for preferring death to capture by a Muslim. The earliest references to Padmini, however, come from two hundred years after her putative existence, in a poem called ''Padmavat''. Sreenivasan showed that this work, along with other transmissions and translations of other texts, worked to establish a communal or national identity. For Rajputs, in other words, Padmini has achieved a reality to encompass their idea of their own historic valour.<ref>{{cite news|newspaper=Scroll.in|url=https://scroll.in/article/827966/persistence-of-memory-never-mind-history-padmavati-is-as-real-for-rajputs-as-their-famed-valour|title=Persistence of memory: Never mind history, Padmavati is as real for Rajputs as their famed valour|author=Tanuja Kothiyal|date=29 January 2017|accessdate=2 December 2017}}</ref>

More prosaically, Alauddin reorganised the revenue systems in his sultanate, thereby ruining the fortunes of intermediaries who were previously responsible for the collection of tax. Sreenivasan showed that several of these intermediaries belonged to social groups that would later be called Rajputs. Combining the loss of their finances with their defeats at the hands of invaders, the Rajputs took recourse to epic poetry to establish a sense of pride.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://scroll.in/article/854706/ala-ud-din-khalji-why-the-peoples-king-was-made-out-to-be-a-monster-by-16th-century-chroniclers|title=Ala-ud-din Khalji: Why the 'people's king' was made out to be a monster by 16th century chroniclers|author=Ruchika Sharma|date=29 October 2017|newspaper=Scroll.in|accessdate=2 December 2017}}</ref>

From 2005, Sreenivasan investigated the lives of women and children servants among elite Rajput clans between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, as part of a collaborative research project on South Asian slavery.<ref name=ub/> Sreenivasan showed that slavery among Rajputs comprised not only Indian but also African female slaves. These were exchanged as dowries in a competitive display of wealth, not only to promote interstate alliances but also to elevate the prestige of households.<ref name="Machado2014">{{cite book|author=Pedro Machado|title=Ocean of Trade|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ODfJBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA257|date=6 November 2014|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-07026-4|page=257}}</ref> Sreenivasan noted that on the one hand, there was little documentation of slavery, especially of women, in keeping with the Rajputs' notions of female respectability; on the other, for Rajput honour, it was important to play down potentially suspect low-born origins. Thus, unless a slave woman became powerful or committed [[Sati (practice)|sati]], she was invisible in the records (mainly epic song). Furthermore, contrary to Western distinctions of slavery and family, the boundaries between clan and lineage were fluid, and modified by histories of slavery. Freed slaves could rewrite their pasts to support clan memberships, while illegitimate offspring of Rajputs with lower-caste women would become slaves in turn.<ref>{{cite book|title=Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772-1843|url=https://archive.org/details/slaveryabolition00majo|url-access=registration|author=Andrea Major|pages=[https://archive.org/details/slaveryabolition00majo/page/22 22–24]|year=2012|publisher=Liverpool University|isbn=978-1781388426}}</ref>

==Selected works==
===Articles===
*{{cite journal|journal=Studies in History|title=Alauddin Khalji Remembered: Conquest, Gender and Community in Medieval Rajput Narratives|year=2002|author=Ramya Sreenivasan|publisher=SAGE|volume=18|issue=2}}
*{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia|title=Honoring the family: narratives and politics of Rajput kinship in pre-modern Rajasthan|author=Ramya Sreenivasan|editor=Indrani Chatterjee|publisher=Permanent Black|year=2004}}
*{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=A Wilderness of Possibilities: Urdu Studies in Transnational Perspective|title=Genre, Politics, History: Urdu Traditions of Padmini|author=Ramya Sreenivasan|editor1=Kathryn Hansen|editor2=David Lelyveld|publisher=Oxford University|year=2005}}
*{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Slavery and South Asian History|title=Drudges, Dancing-girls, Concubines: Female Slaves in Rajput Polity, 1500-1850|author=Ramya Sreenivasan|editor1=Indrani Chatterjee|editor2=Richard Eaton|publisher=Indiana University|year=2006}}
*{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Religious Interactions in Mughal India|title=Faith and Allegiance in Mughal India: Perspectives from Rajasthan|author=Ramya Sreenivasan|editor1=Vasudha Dalmia|editor2=Munis D. Faruqui |publisher=Oxford University|year=2014}}
*{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India|title=Warrior-Tales at Hinterland Courts in North India, c. 1370 – 1550|author=Ramya Sreenivasan|editor1=Francesca Orsini|editor2=Samira Sheikh|publisher=Oxford University|year=2014}}
*{{cite journal|journal=Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient|title=Kingship and Authority Reconsidered: Amber (Rajasthan), circa 1560 – 1615|author=Ramya Sreenivasan|volume=57|year=2014}}
===Books===
* {{cite book|title=The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in India, c. 1500-1900|author=Ramya Sreenivasan|publisher=University of Washington|isbn=978-0295987606|year=2007}}

==Awards==
Sreenivasan's ''The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen'' won the [[Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy]] Prize in 2009.<ref>{{cite web|publisher=University of Washington Press|url=http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/SREMAC.html|title=The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen|accessdate=9 November 2017}}</ref>

== References ==

{{Reflist}}

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[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:21st-century Indian historians]]
[[Category:1966 births]]
[[Category:University of Delhi alumni]]
[[Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty]]
[[Category:Jawaharlal Nehru University alumni]]
[[Category:University at Buffalo faculty]]

Ramya Sreenivasan - Revision history

14.139.123.36 at 17:35, 30 August 2021