Valentine Daniel
Sri Lankan academic, anthropologist and author
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Professor Errol Valentine Daniel is a Sri Lankan academic, anthropologist and author. He is currently Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University.[1][2]
University of Chicago
Valentine Daniel | |
|---|---|
| Education | Amherst College University of Chicago |
| Occupation | Academic |
Early life
Daniel is of Tamil descent on his father's side and of Burgher descent on his mother side.[3] He was educated at Jaffna College.[4][5] After school he joined Amherst College from where he received a B.A. degree.[6] He then received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago.[6]
Career
Daniel taught at the University of Washington (1978–90).[7] He then taught at the University of Michigan (1990–97), serving as Director of the Program in Comparative Studies in Social Transformation from 1995 to 1997.[6] He then joined Columbia University. Daniel has also been a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, University of Texas at Austin, Centre d’étude de l’Inde et de l’Asie Sud and United Nations University.[6]
Daniel was one of the recipients of the 1995 Guggenheim Fellowship.[6] He is proficient in Tamil, Sinhala, French and Malayalam.[6][8]
Works
Valentine has written several books:[1]
- Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry (1983, University of California Press. co-editor Charles F. Keyes)[9]
- Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (1984, University of California Press)[10]
- The Semeiosis of Suicide in Sri Lanka (1989, in Semiotics, Self, and Society by Benjamin Lee and Greg Urban, Mouton de Gruyter)
- Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia (1992, Frank Cass & Co, co-editors Henry Bernstein and Tom Brass)
- Culture/Contexture: Essays in Anthropology and Literary Study (1996, University of California Press, co-editor Jeffrey M. Peck)[11]
- Mistrusting Refugees (1996, University of California Press, co-editor John Knudsen)[12]
- Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence (1997, Princeton University Press)[13]
- Suffering Nation and Alienation (1997, in Social Suffering by Kleinman, Das and Lock, University of California Press)[14]
- The Limits of Culture (1998, in In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century by Nicholas B. Dirks, University of Minnesota Press)
- The Refugee: A Discourse on Displacement (2002, in Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines by Jeremy MacClancy, University of Chicago Press)