Radhika Seshan recently retired as Professor, Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University (formerly University of Pune), where she had been working since 1996. After completing her M.A. and M.Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, she completed her Ph.D. from the University of Pune. Her work has primarily been on medieval Indian history, particularly on maritime and urban history. Apart from publishing numerous research articles in reputed journals and edited works she has authored three monographs and edited six works.
Shankar Goyal's publications, focusing on issues of historiography in general, the period of Harshavardhana in particular, and Rajasthan, where he has lived and worked for decades, have been prolific. Apart from his long-standing engagement with the history of Harsha, Goyal has also investigated other major dynasties such as the Guptas and the Vakatakas. Many of the volumes that he has edited contain contributions from scholars representing diverse points of view. In combining and collating these, Goyal has demonstrated his diligence, empathy and understanding, standing for an open-ended tradition of scholarship that is valuable in situations where academic discourse occasionally tends to be unnecessarily and fruitlessly polarized.
As important, Shankar Goyal has demonstrated a commitment toward developing a detailed understanding of a wide range of themes and issues, scrutinizing sources with care and throughness. He displays an ability to analyze a range of textual, inscriptional and numismatic material and combine these to arrive at his conclusions. This is a distinctive hallmark of his scholarship that is particularly valuable in a situation where we often tend to jump to rapid conclusions, and lack the patience required for painstaking investigations. Further, methodologically, Goyal consistently contextualizes his discussion on political events, processes, personalities and institutions in terms of the wider political, economic, and cultural worlds within which these are located.
Shankar Goyal retired in 2019 from his position as Professor of the Department of History, Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur. An alumnus of the Deccan College, Pune, his work has primarily focussed on early Indian history, and on the early medieval period of India's past. His works on Harsha are seminal and will undoubtedly be the standard reference point for many years to come.
However, what I think is particularly important, is that Shankar Goyal places the study of history in the context of time and space as well as of historiography. The relevance of historiography, and the need to have a thorough grounding in the works of earlier scholars and of the sources, is something that underpins everything that he has written. History, well studied, requires a clear and objective understanding not only of the time being studied, but also the later time in which an earlier period is being written about. Historiography, as he has constantly said, is the base of understanding processes of historical continuity and change. It is this aspect that this volume seeks to highlight, through studies of what Shankar Goyal has written. This volume is therefore both, a study of the historiography of Shankar Goyal, and the relevance of such writing to the study of history as a whole.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
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Hindu (872)
Agriculture (84)
Ancient (992)
Archaeology (567)
Architecture (524)
Art & Culture (844)
Biography (582)
Buddhist (540)
Cookery (160)
Emperor & Queen (488)
Islam (233)
Jainism (271)
Literary (868)
Mahatma Gandhi (377)
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