Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of the History of Religions and COSAS member, has continued her work following her 2018 retirement.

Dr. Doniger celebrated the graduation of her 85th and last PhD student, Nell Hawley, in October 2022.

Additionally, Dr. Doniger released An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963-64 in 2022. “Those who have read and admired Wendy Doniger will be delighted to find much of her later work anticipated in these letters and memories, and the few who haven’t will get to see, through the eyes of a sensitive, sharp-eyed and witty young scholar, India as they have rarely seen it before,” the publisher site says.

Also in 2022, she released After the War: The Last Books of the Mahabharata, which is the “first proper translation of a key part of the Mahabharata by one of the foremost translators of Sanskrit.” The work is also praised as a “masterpiece of world literature.”

Dr. Doniger is now working on a memoir tentatively entitled “Horses for Lovers, Dogs for Husbands” and a translation of the miscellaneous stories [having nothing to do with the main characters] scattered through books 12 through 14 of the Mahabharata.

COSAS was lucky to welcome Dr. Doniger to campus to give the opening remarks for the 2023 South Asian Graduate Student Conference at the beginning of March (pictured to the left with the 2023 student organizers of the conference).

Congratulations to Dr. Doniger on her continued contributions to the field! We continue to wish you the best in your retirement.