Program in Early Cultures

Srinivas Reddy

Visiting Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Research Interests South Asia

Biography

Srinivas began his musical training as a guitarist and composer. In 1998 he graduated from Brown University with a BA in South Asian Studies and completed his senior project entitled NaadaSat, a multi-instrumental ensemble piece that reflected his growing interest in South Asian philosophy and music.

After moving to San Francisco in 1998, Srinivas met his guru and mentor Sri Partha Chatterjee, a direct disciple of the late sitar maestro Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. Since then Srinivas has dedicated himself to Indian classical music and rigorously trained with his teacher in the traditional guru-shishya style. Srinivas is a professional concert sitarist and has given numerous recitals in the US, India and Europe. He has three albums to his credit: GITA (1999), Sitar & Tabla (2001) and Hemant & Jog (2008).

In 2011 Srinivas graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in South and Southeast Asian Studies. Under the guidance of Professor George Hart he studied Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu literary traditions and completed his thesis on the Vijayanagara emperor Krishnadevaraya and his grand Telugu epic Amuktamalyada. A translation of the work entitled Giver of the Worn Garland was published by Penguin Books in 2010. With the same publisher Srinivas has also released two translations in the Complete Kalidasa series: The Dancer and the King (Malavikagnimitram) and The Cloud Message (Meghadutam). He is now working on a biography of the south Indian emperor Krishnadevaraya.

For five years Srinivas worked as Assistant Professor of South and Southeast Asian Studies at IIT Gandhinagar in Gujarat, India and is currently visiting professor of Religious Studies and Contemplative Studies at Brown University. He lives in Rhode Island and spend his time performing, teaching and conducting research around the world.

Recent News

Published in "The Archaeology of Knowledge Traditions of the Indian Ocean World."

This book examines knowledge traditions that held together the fluid and overlapping maritime worlds of the Indian Ocean in the premodern period, as evident in the material and archaeological record.
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Published in the Asian Review of World Histories.

This paper examines five distinct events from seventeenth-century South Asia: a pirate raid, two battles and two more pirate raids, all of which represent varying acts of defiance committed against the great Mughal imperium.
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