Montgomery Fellow Githa Hariharan engages students in the literature of
India
The Montgomery
Fellowship program, endowed by Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth F. Montgomery
(Dartmouth Class of 1925), routinely brings men and women of remarkable
achievement to Dartmouth as Montgomery Fellows. They speak about their work,
interact with students, and leave an impact that far outlives their visits.
During the summer term, the Endowment presented the first half of an
extraordinary two-part opportunity on India: a course offered by novelist and
Montgomery Fellow Githa Hariharan. Beginning this fall, Romila Thapar, the
preeminent historian of India, will teach as well. The two residencies form a
series titled "Reimagining India," focusing on the nation's
literature and history.
Githa Hariharan meets in Montgomery House with students taking her summer term
course. (Photo by Joseph Mehling '69)
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Hariharan, of New Delhi, India, is the author of four highly acclaimed
novels, including her first, The Thousand Faces of Night, for which
she was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She has also published several
collections of short stories. The course she offered, The Edges of
Nation-Making: Perspectives on Modern Indian Literature, opened a window into
Indian literature as well as the subcontinent's social movements, issues of
gender, caste, and the narrative of the nation.
Hariharan says the opportunity to teach was what initially attracted her to
the residency. "I learned that it involved teaching and that I could
design the course-that I could have all this space for designing what I would
teach."
Susan DeBevoise Wright, executive director of the Montgomery Endowment,
says, "A writer by trade, Githa Hariharan brought her splendid literary
gifts to the classroom and took us on a guided tour of her native land. She was
a creative and dynamic presence on campus, offering students and faculty a
unique intellectual experience. Githa personified the objectives that Kenneth
and Harle Montgomery envisioned when they established the Montgomery Fellowship
program."
Students who took her class say they enjoyed the course design and were
thrilled by the opportunity to learn from the celebrated writer. Helena
Rosenthal '09 calls the class a "phenomenal experience" and Hariharan
a "gifted teacher."
Hariharan returns her students compliments, saying, "Students will
always surprise you. There were a couple of texts that I thought they would
find difficult, but I didn't want to be dishonest and make things simple. I put
those texts in the curriculum with some hesitation, but those were precisely
the texts that the students seemed to absolutely seize upon. They really met me
halfway."
Chetan Mehta '08, a math major, calls the class a "one-of-a-kind
opportunity," citing the rare chance to learn about a body of literature
from "an individual entrenched in the modern literary movement in the
country. The fact that we weren't 'interpreting' literature through the eyes of
an academic removed from the subject was appealing." He adds that
Hariharan made the material accessible to students of various backgrounds.
"I worked quite hard on the course before I came," says Hariharan,
"though I knew that one can't be rigid about these things. I needed to
find out what the students knew." The important thing she wanted to convey
to students was that, "I didn't want words like 'culture' to be used
loosely. The whole idea is that we have to define these words carefully, and
the students were enthusiastic about that."
Helping to stoke that enthusiasm was the opportunity to hold class
occasionally in Montgomery House, the graceful residence that sits on the edge
of Occom Pond and houses the Endowment's visiting fellows. "This is the
kind of house and garden that you want to share," she says.
With the end of the summer, Hariharan departed the idyllic setting of
Montgomery House and returned to New Delhi where she is writing a new book,
which she says she worked on at Dartmouth. "I plan to keep working on
it," she says. "If you've sewn the seeds, and a little green starts
to show, you want to encourage it."
By GENEVIEVE HAAS
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