Faculty

Contact Info Department of Religion Tufts University Eaton Hall, Room 314  Medford, MA 02155 Tel: 617-627-3418 Email Professor

Brian Hatcher
Professor, Packard Chair of Theology

Education
PhD, Harvard University
MA, Harvard University
MDiv, Yale University
BA, Carleton College

Areas of Interest
Brian Hatcher is a scholar of the Hindu tradition in colonial and contemporary India. In his work he explores the complexities of cultural convergence through which idioms and practices converge to yield new patterns of thought and behavior. He is particularly interested in recovering the agency of Indian intellectuals in shaping such processes, either in conformity with or resistance to the normative ideologies and institutions of British colonialism. In his earlier published work he has explored such topics as moral pedagogy in early Bengali schoolbooks; the dynamics of modern Hindu eclecticism; reformist religious associations in colonial Calcutta; and the fate of Sanskrit learning in colonial India. His most recent monograph, Bourgeois Hinduism, provides the first ever translation of a rare set of Bengali discourses delivered before the Tattvabodhini Sabha in Calcutta during 1839-40. He recently completed a translation of Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar’s 1855 Bengali work promoting the marriage of Hindu widows. In Hindu Widow Marriage he makes the complete text available to English-language readers for the first time. Currently he is working on a new book-length study of Vidyasagar while continuing his research on religious change in early modern South Asia.

Monographs
Bourgeois Hinduism, or Faith of the Modern Vedantists: Rare Discourses from Early Colonial Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Idioms of Improvement: Vidyasagar and Cultural Encounter in Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Translations
Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar, Hindu Widow Marriage: An Epochal Work on Social Reform from Colonial India. Translated by Brian A. Hatcher (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)

Edited Volumes
Trans-colonial Modernities in South Asia. Edited by Michael S. Dodson and Brian A. Hatcher (New York: Routledge, 2012)