Why is Rama Still (All) Around?
Philip Lutgendorf retired in 2018 as professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies in the University of Iowa’s Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literature, where he had taught since 1985.
His book on the performance of the Hindi Ramayana, "The Life of a Text" (1991) won the A. K. Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for research on the popular Hindu deity Hanuman, which appeared as "Hanuman’s Tale, The Messages of a Divine Monkey" (2007). His interests include epic performance traditions, folklore, and popular culture. He is presently translating the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, in seven dual-language volumes, for the Murty Classical Library of India.
He maintains a website devoted to Hindi popular cinema, a.k.a. “Bollywood” (http://www.uiowa.edu/indiancinema/ ). His research on the cultural history of “chai” was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Senior Overseas Research Fellowship (2010-11). He served from 2010-2018 as President of the American Institute of Indian Studies and continues to chair its board of trustees.
(Parents Dining)