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here & now
Y o u n g F a c u l t y F o c u s
An ‘unbeatable combination’
Junior scholars bring talent, diversity to department
of South Asianists
Pictured above, from left: Rochona Majumdar, Yigal
Bronner, Sascha Ebeling, and Thibaut d’Hubert in
the Harper Memorial Library Commons.
The University of Chicago did not
establish the Department of South
Asian Languages and Civilizations
until 1965, but Sanskrit—studied
in the context of historical philology—has
figured as an object of
study since the University’s founding. South Asian
studies, focusing on the Indian subcontinent and surrounding
areas, have long engaged Chicago scholars.
Today the University is a leader in the field due in
large part to extraordinary faculty. Over the past 11
years, the department has made a spate of faculty hires
and other academic appointments that should position
it to remain at the fore of South Asian studies. Assistant
Professor Yigal Bronner, PhD’99, believes that the
department boasts “an unusually harmonious combination
of junior and senior faculty and our dedicated group of
lecturers. This is simply an unbeatable combination.”
In this new feature devoted to the Humanities Division’s
young faculty, Tableau is pleased to introduce the
department’s talented and diverse assistant professors:
Bronner, Thibaut d’Hubert, Sascha Ebeling, and
Rochona Majumdar.
A native of Jerusalem, Yigal Bronner is a Sanskritist
trained at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and Chicago. Bronner was drawn to Sanskrit in college,
where he was required to learn it as part of his major
in South Asian studies. “It quickly became clear to me
that this is where my heart was,” he says. “I loved the
language itself, the learning process, and the emic
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