By Matt Morris
Renowned Indian anthropologist to visit U of L
For all those history buffs among us that are looking for a chance to bone up on their knowledge of royal heraldry in India, listen up. Jayasinhji Jhala, a well known anthropologist who has directed numerous documentaries about India, will discuss “Kings, Colonials and Coats of Arms: The Meanings of Royal Heraldry in India” at U of L on October 9.
The lecture is free to the public and will take place in Ford Hall Room 401 at 3 p.m. The event is part of the history department’s Gottschalk Lecture Series honoring former U of L history faculty member Louis Gottschalk, an American and French revolutions scholar and the 1953 American Historical Association president.
Jhala’s lecture will examine how Indian princes adopted and adapted the British tradition of using coats of arms to signify social status and cultural importance in Raj- era India. He will discuss how the Indian princes modified what had been an ancient British symbolic tradition to suit their own local and regional needs for political legitimacy.
Jhala is an associate professor of anthropology at Temple University, where he serves as the director of both the Visual Anthropology Media Lab and the Undergraduate Track in Visual Anthropology. He has been involved in interpreting culture on film and video for the past twenty years. He received his B.A. in English literature (1968) at St. Stephens College in Delhi, India, an M.V.S. (1983) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. (1991) from Harvard University.
Jhala concerns himself with ethnographic films that illustrate the cultures of India and the United States while speaking to various issues in visual anthropology, and in his career, he has produced, directed, filmed, and edited over fifteen ethnographic films. His films, which have been seen by national and international audiences, include “Forgotten Headhunters and Apatani Sacrifice (1978),” “A Zenana and Tragada Bhavai (1981),” “Journey with Ganapati (1982),” “Bharvad Predicament (1994),” “Whose Paintings? (1995),” “Morning with Asch (1997),” and “Conversation with a Collector: Dialogue with a Docent (1998).” In addition, Jhala has published numerous written texts which have addressed issues about art and anthropology, nomadism, religious worship, indigenous interpretations of local culture, ethnographic filmmaking and its reception, photography, Hindu marriage, and Rajput ideology and politics.
Jhala’s research focuses on the interpretation of culture on various audio, visual and audiovisual media, and new conventions by which to make visual communication more effective. In addition, he is directing a series exploring the biographies and practices of ethnographic filmmaking leaders. This series of conversational engagements began in 1986 with Jean Rouch in a Harvard swimming pool and premiered in 1996 with a film on the late Dr. Timothy Ashe. Currently, he is working on several ethnographic films that address the themes of transhumance, Hindu domestic worship, and Rajput ideology and biography.
For more information on the event, contact Thomas Mackey at (502) 852-6817.
