The South Asia Reading Group (aka Kitabmandal) has been meeting on campus regularly since Winter term 1999. Beginning in January 2005, the Reading Group will function as a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop with support from the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies of the University of Michigan.

U-M faculty, graduate students, other local scholars with doctorates, and occasionally people from the community at large convene for serious critical discussion of scholarly books, published research articles, or draft manuscripts. The group usually meets for two-hour sessions four to six times per term and anywhere from six or seven people to as many as sixteen have attended these discussions, with the number usually divided quite evenly between faculty (or other post-doctoral scholars) and graduate students.

The readings planned for the current term are linked here. For additional details on time and place, contact Lee Schlesinger.

The readings and participants come from a range of disciplines. In the past three years, the regular participants are from Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Art History, Asian Languages and Cultures, Comparative Literature, History, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Women's Studies. Frequently, people who are not South Asia specialists have also attended when the readings seem methodologically or conceptually relevant.

Readings are often selected simply because several people want to discuss together what appear to be significant or especially challenging contributions to South Asian studies. Also, there have been many times when work by a scholar invited to campus for another program has been read and discussed with the author, and on occasion work by local faculty or post-doctoral fellows has been considered.

A complete list of the texts discussed since this group's founding is available. At present, some 70 individuals are on the email notification list for the South Asia Reading Group.  To be added to the email notification list or to make a suggestion for future readings, please contact Lee Schlesinger.

What has been most distinctive, and unfortunately even somewhat innovative, about the South Asia Reading Group is the close critical attention directed at academic writing and reading. Discussions are intense and yet the atmosphere is collegial. Students frequently say that they wish their graduate seminars could be as careful, focused, and substantive in discussing readings. A number of senior scholars visiting Michigan who had work of theirs discussed in the Kitabmandal later have remarked afterwards that in the rush of routine academic life they never any more get their work so closely read, so meaningfully contemplated, and so usefully criticized. One central aim of the South Asia Reading Group is to provide an example for students, and a reminder for more senior scholars, of the benefits and delights of avoiding glibness, narrowness, and superficiality, as people with different training, interests, and perspectives concentrate collectively to broaden and deepen their grasp of studies on South Asia.