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Local gods and popular culture: a study of mother goddess worship in an urban setting

I was awarded this grant while pursuing doctoral research, and will submit my dissertation in summer 2001. The grant allowed me to travel to fieldsites, to undertake photography, and to cover other costs of fieldwork and report preparation and to achieve more ambitious documentation of craft and folk traditions than I would otherwise have achieved. It also made me self-confident, and strengthened and boosted my morale. I am planning to publish articles in academic journals and have lectured to American students on these topics.

Dokra Bronzes of Tribal India

This award gave me an opportunity to do fieldwork and learn the technique of lost-wax process in Dokra bronze-casting. As a student of Design (BFA) I was able to use the technique to make jewellery and incorporate the Dokra Bronze tribal forms in two dimensional textile design. Having graduated from Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University Santiniketan, I am embarking (2001) on History of Art at the National Museum Institute, New Delhi. I have also made a proposal for research for a Junior Fellowship in Visual Art from the Department of Culture (Govt of India).

Relief sculptures as revealed from Hero-stones in Thiruvannamalai, Samburayar and North Arcot Districts of Tamilnadu

The grant was very helpful to me in allowing me to discover a number of hero-stones and inscriptions during the Pallava and Chola periods in Vellore and Thiruvannamalai districts and to prepare research articles in vernacular research magazines like Hindu, Avanam, Pulamai, Dinamani etc. I am currently (2001) doing PhD research in the field of Hero-stones .

The construction of indigenous gods and linkages with the communities of eastern Uttar Pradesh

The award of a Small Study and Research grant proved invaluable for me for reasons probably different from many others. I was not a young scholar but a university teacher in mid-career, and had developed a serious academic interest in an area that was not directly related to my formal discipline of English literature. My independent readings in sociology, anthropology and history, along with my travels in the Indian countryside had opened the fresh arena of the creation and continuation of village gods as an intergral part of cultural existence in India.

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