View Profile Page

Profile

Ezra Rashkow is a scholar of modern South Asian history, environmental history, and the history of anthropology. Much of his work engages with the experiences of indigenous peoples in modernity, and global debates over the relationship between biological and cultural diversity. In particular, the concept of “endangerment” has become a unifying strand throughout his body of work to date. His research thus explores historical discourses and policies that project biological and cultural diversity as similarly endangered, and in need of similar or simultaneous forms of conservation. Working in western and central India, he collects oral histories of Bhil, Gond, Baiga, Kurku and other Adivasi communities facing conservation- and/or development-induced displacement. He then situates these oral histories in dialog with the colonial archive, anthropological accounts, and activist engagements with these communities’ histories.

The following is a selection of his recent publications:

Books:

The Nature of Endangerment in India: Tigers, 'Tribes', Extermination & Conservation, 1818-2020. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Memory, Identity and the Colonial Encounter in India: Essays in Honor of Peter Robb. Routledge, 2017.

Articles:


"'Scandalwood': A History of Overexploitation and Endangerment." In Indian Sandalwood: A Compendium, edited by A. N. Arunkumar et al., 27-43. Springer, 2022. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-6565-3_2

"Wilding the domestic: Camp servants and glamping in British India." The Indian Economic & Social History Review 58, no. 3 (2021): 361-391. https://doi.org/10.1177/00194646211020309

“Dispossessing Memory: Adivasi Oral Histories from the Margins of Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve, Central India” in Ezra Rashkow, Sanjukta Ghosh, Upal Chakrabarty, eds., Memory, Identity and the Colonial Encounter in India: Essays in Honor of Peter Robb. Routledge, 2017.

"Introduction" in Ezra Rashkow, Sanjukta Ghosh, Upal Chakrabarty, eds., Memory, Identity and the Colonial Encounter in India: Essays in Honor of Peter Robb. Routledge, 2017.

“Resistance to Hunting in Pre-independence India: Religious Environmentalism, Ecological Nationalism or Cultural Conservation?” Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 2 (March 2015): 270-301. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X14000110

“Idealizing Inhabited Wilderness: A Revision to the History of Indigenous Peoples in National Parks.” History Compass 12, no. 10 (2014): 818–832. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12190

“Making Subaltern Shikaris: Histories of the Hunted in Colonial Central India.” South Asian History and Culture 5, no. 3 (2014): 292-313. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2014.905324

“Perfumed the Axe that Laid it Low: The Endangerment of Sandalwood in Southern India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 51, no.1 (March 2014): 41-70. https://doi.org/10.1177/0019464613515553

“Jain Endangerment Discourse.” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 49 (7 December 2013): 24-27. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24478369

Office Hours

Fall

Tuesday

2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Thursday

3:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Links

Montclair State does not endorse the views or opinions expressed in a faculty member's webpage or website. Consistent with the principles of academic freedom, the content provided is that of the author and does not express the opinions or views of Montclair State University.

• https://montclair.academia.edu/EzraRashkow