Romila Thapar appointed Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at Library of Congress

[Allen W Thrasher]

April 17, 2003

Romila Thapar Named as First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and
Cultures of the South at Library of Congress

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Romila Thapar as
the first holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the
South at the Library of Congress. The holder of this chair, which is
located in the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, pursues
research on the regions of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South
and Southeast Asia, or the islands of the Pacific including Australia
and New Zealand, using the immense foreign language collections in the
specialized reading rooms of the Library of Congress.

As occupant of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South,
Thapar will spend ten months at the John W. Kluge Center pursuing
"Historical Consciousness in Early India" as her area of research.

Romila Thapar, emeritus professor of Ancient Indian History at
Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Dehli, who has served as visiting
professor at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, is a
recognized authority on Indian history. The author of many seminal works
on the history of ancient India, her volume of the Penguin History of
India has been continuously in print since 1966. Her latest publication
is "Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300." Other recent works are
"History and Beyond," "Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History,"
and "History and Beyond." In her published works, Thapar has pioneered
both the study of early Indian texts as history and the integration of
the critical use of archaeology with written sources.

During her illustrious career, Thapar has held many visiting posts in
Europe, the United States and Japan. She is an Honorary Fellow at Lady
Margaret Hall, Oxford, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), University of London. She has honorary doctorates from the
University of Chicago, the Institut National des Langues et
Civilisations Orientales in Paris, the University of Oxford and the
University of Calcutta.

Through a generous endowment from its namesake, the Library of Congress
established the John W. Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the
world's best thinkers to stimulate, energize, and distill wisdom from
the Library's rich resources and to interact with policymakers in
Washington, D.C. The Kluge Center houses five senior Kluge Chairs
(American Law and Governance, Countries and Cultures of the North,
Countries and Cultures of the South, Technology and Society, and Modern
Culture); other senior-level chairs (Henry A. Kissinger Chair, Cary and
Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics, and the Harissios
Papamarkou Chair in Education); and nearly 25 post-doctoral fellows.

For more information about the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of
the South or any of the other fellowships and grants offered by the John
W. Kluge Center, contact the Office of Scholarly Programs, Library of
Congress, 101 Independence Avenue S.E, Washington, DC 20540-4860;
telephone (202) 707-3302, fax 202-707-3595.

John W. Kluge Center website:  www.loc.gov/kluge

Contact:
Helen Dalrymple (202) 707-1940
Robert Saladini (202) 707-2692