Veena Das facts for kids

Veena Das is a very important professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She was born in India in 1945. Anthropology is the study of human societies and cultures. Professor Das studies how people deal with difficult times, like violence or suffering, and how governments affect people's lives. She has won many international awards for her work, including the Ander Retzius Gold Medal. She was also chosen as a special member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Her School Days and Teaching Career

Veena Das went to college at Indraprastha College for Women and the Delhi School of Economics in India. She earned her PhD in 1970. A PhD is a very high university degree. She taught at the University of Delhi for many years, from 1967 to 2000. Later, she became a professor at the New School for Social Research from 1997 to 2000. After that, she moved to Johns Hopkins University. There, she was the head of the Anthropology Department from 2001 to 2008.

Important Books She Wrote

Understanding Old Indian Traditions

Her first book, Structure and Cognition: Aspects of Hindu Caste and Ritual (published in 1977), looked at old writings from the 1200s to the 1600s. She explored how different groups of people in India described themselves. She showed how Hindu ideas were often based on three main parts: priests, family connections, and people who gave up worldly things. This was a very important way to understand how new ideas and changes happened within these groups.

Life and Difficult Times

Veena Das's most recent book is Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (published in 2006). In this book, she explains that difficult events are not always separate from everyday life. Instead, she shows how they can become a part of ordinary experiences. A famous thinker named Stanley Cavell wrote the introduction to her book. He said it could be read alongside another important book called Philosophical Investigations.

One part of her book talks about women who were taken from their homes during the time India became independent. This topic has been very interesting to people who study law and history. Life and Words was influenced by the ideas of other thinkers. It also talks about real historical moments, like the Partition of India and when Indira Gandhi was killed in 1984. The book tells the stories of people and communities who lived through these events. It describes how these big events stayed with them and became part of their daily lives.

Her Research Work

Since the 1980s, Professor Das has focused on studying difficult events and how people suffer in society. Her book, Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia (published in 1990), was one of the first to bring up these topics in the study of South Asian cultures. She also worked with other experts, like Arthur Kleinman, on a series of three books. These books explored new ideas in these fields. The books were called Social Suffering, Violence and Subjectivity, and Remaking a World.

Awards and Honors

Veena Das has received many special awards for her work.

• In 1995, she received the Anders Retzius Gold Medal from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography.
• In 2000, she received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Chicago. This is a special degree given to honor someone's achievements.
• She is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• She is also a fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences.
• In 2007, Professor Das gave the Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester. Many people consider this to be the most important yearly lecture series in the field of Anthropology.
• In 2019, Professor Das was chosen as a Fellow of the British Academy.