Saurabh Dube

Saurabh Dube is an Indian scholar whose work combines history and anthropology, archival and field research, and subaltern studies and postcolonial perspectives. After teaching at the University of Delhi, since 1995 he is Professor of History at the Center of Asian and African Studies at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. Dube has been described as having "...long been one of the most interesting and perceptive scholars addressing the dilemmas of modernity in South Asia." His work has been appreciated for setting up conversations between scholarship on South Asia and Latin America, combining "...sociology, history, anthropology, and postcolonial studies to present a nuanced analysis of the challenges confronting our contemporary understandings of empire and modernity, power and difference, and nation and history." Dube's work has been read for "...its lyrical tenor, conversational approach and inspired indecision between the archive and the field. ... an irresistible feast for the historical imagination... that is visibly kind to theoretical abstractions", while it closely addresses details, especially of the Chhattisgargh region. Others, however, have found his writing to be far too theoretical and vastly broad in scope.

Dube was born to anthropologist parents, S.C. Dube and Leela Dube. He received the BA (Honours) and MA degrees in History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi; an MPhil (1988) from the University of Delhi; and a PhD (1992) from the University of Cambridge. Dube has held visiting professorships several times at institutions such as Cornell University and the Johns Hopkins University. He has also been a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, and the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, South Africa. He is married to fellow cultural historian, Ishita Banerjee.

Dube’s research explores questions of colonialism and modernity, law and legalities, caste and community, evangelization and empire, and popular religion and subaltern art. Apart from more than one hundred journal articles and book chapters, his authored books include Untouchable Pasts (State University of New York Press, 1998; reprint Sage, 2001); Stitches on Time (Duke University Press and Oxford University Press, 2004); After Conversion (Yoda Press, 2009); Subjects of Modernity (Manchester University Press, forthcoming) as well as a quintet in historical anthropology in the Spanish language comprising, Sujetos subalternos (2001), Genealogías del presente (2003), Historias esparcidas (2007), Modernidad e Historia (2011), and Formaciones de lo contemporaneo (forthcoming), published by El Colegio de México. Among Dube’s fifteen edited and co-edited volumes are Postcolonial Passages (Oxford University Press, 2004); Historical Anthropology (Oxford University Press, 2007); Enchantments of Modernity (Routledge, 2009); Ancient to Modern (Oxford University Press, 2009), Modern Makeovers (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Crime through Time (Oxford University Press, 2013).