Dear Patrick,

The past few days I have had occasion to reflect on what I perceived as American normative imperialism, and to appreciate my fine female colleagues in French Indology who have spoken out with healthy nuance on some sensitive issues.

Now you share the announcement of a "first book subvention" instated in name of two Indologists who began their careers on this side of the Atlantic to support the work "of young scholars in the field of classical Indology". Great. But ... the announcement limits the meaning of "academic presses" to "either US university presses or the US offices of foreign academic presses, such as Oxford University Press". As far as I know, there are very few institutions in the USA today which even recognize such as field as "classical Indology". May I ask what is the rationale for limiting the scope of this subvention to young scholars who wish to publish in the USA, and who produce a kind of scholarship that is sufficiently compatible with normative conceptions of scholarship that are current in American academia to be publishable (by a young scholar) over there?

I could come up with a rather long list of "first books" that have, in my view, made important contributions to classical Indology but were not and probably could not have been published by any of the presses intended in your announcement. I wonder why this subvention would want to exclude such scholarship.

With warm greetings, from France,

Arlo Griffiths

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