Valentine Daniel
Professor Errol Valentine Daniel is a Sri Lankan Tamil academic, anthropologist and author. He is currently Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University.Early life
Daniel was educated at Jaffna College. After school he joined Amherst College from where he received a B.A. degree. He then received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago.Career
Daniel taught at the University of Washington. He then taught at the University of Michigan, serving as Director of the Program in Comparative Studies in Social Transformation from 1995 to 1997. He then joined Columbia University. Daniel has also been a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, University of Texas at Austin, Centre d’étude de l’Inde et de l’Asie Sud and United Nations University.
Daniel was one of the recipients of the 1995 Guggenheim Fellowship. He is proficient in Tamil, Sinhala, French and Malayalam.Works
Valentine has written several books:
- Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry
- Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way
- The Semeiosis of Suicide in Sri Lanka
- Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia
- Culture/Contexture: Essays in Anthropology and Literary Study
- Mistrusting Refugees
- Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence
- Suffering Nation and Alienation
- The Limits of Culture
- The Refugee: A Discourse on Displacement
