Press release
WSSU will host lecture on the caste system and social exclusion in modern India
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Dr. Ramnarayan (Ram) Rawat, associate professor of history at the
University of Delaware, will explore caste, social exclusion and the use of public space in
modern Indian democracy during a lecture on Thursday, February 7, at 11 a.m. in Room 228 of
the Hall-Patterson Building on the campus of Winston-Salem State University (WSSU).
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is entitled “The Practice of Untouchability and
the Dalit Movement in Modern India.”
Rawat will be a visiting scholar at the university February 7-8 as part of a National Endowment
for the Humanities funded project on integrating India into the liberal arts curriculum. In
addition to his public lecture, he will also conduct a workshop for WSSU faculty on “Teaching
Race, Caste and Social Exclusion.”
A historian of South Asian, Rawat’s teaching and research interests include colonial and
postcolonial India, racism and social exclusion, subaltern histories and histories of democracy.
His research has been supported by a three-year Mellon-funded postdoctoral teaching fellowship
at the University of Pennsylvania, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship at the University of
Washington, a Harry Frank Guggenheim dissertation fellowship, and a doctoral fellowship from
the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. He received his B.A. (Honors) and
Ph.D. from the University of Delhi in India. He received his B.A. with honors and Ph.D. from
the University of Delhi in India.
Rawat is currently working on a research project titled, “A New History of Democracy: Dalit
Spaces, Printing, and Practices in modern North India.” This project builds on his first book,
“Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North India,” which was awarded
the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences by the American Institute of Indian
Studies.
Before joining the University of Delaware in 2010, Rawat taught in the Department of South
Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and in the History Department at the University
of Notre Dame.