Princeton in search for Sanskrit lecturer in response to petition

The University is now looking to hire a three-year lecturer in Sanskrit to begin in fall 2015, according to its online employment postings.

Religion Associate Professor Jonathan Gold, who will head the search committee for the new candidate, explained that the lecturer would ideally teach five courses over the course of each year, with two first-year Sanskrit courses, two second-year Sanskrit courses and an upper-level language or content course.

However, Gold noted that these plans remain tentative and depend on the number of students who are qualified to take the more advanced level language courses.

The University decided to make the hire after Vidushi Sharma ’17 started a petitionin late September to reintroduce Sanskrit to the University curriculum.

The student body and administrative response to the petition have been encouraging, Sharma said.

“I was pretty optimistic to begin with, and professors who supported the effort told me that the more students I could get, the better,” she noted.

Although Gold noted that this petition was not the first attempt to establish a position for Sanskrit, he expressed appreciation for the student body’s enthusiasm.

The search committee for the position, Gold explained, consists of various representatives from the classics, comparative literature and religion departments.

He addedthat he was excited and optimistic for a very strong applicant pool.

“We’re looking for dynamic and engaged language instructors with a deep and sophisticated research agenda in Sanskrit language, but also an interest in cutting-edge approaches to student learning,” Gold said.

Funding for the position will come from the Council of the Humanities, the Program in South Asian Studies and the Dean of the Faculty, Gold said.

Eric Huntington, a postdoctoral fellow in the religion department, said that the three-year length of the lectureship is a good starting point for the development of a cohort of students moving from beginner to advanced levels of Sanskrit.

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“This would presumably create more demand for a Sanskritist on campus. It’s a big step forward,” saidHuntington, who is in the religion department and studies theBuddhist traditions of Tibet, Nepal and India.

Sharma said she hopes to enroll in an advanced Sanskrit course next fall and noted that several other students have expressed interest in enrolling in intensive courses over the summer so that they can take Sanskrit at the University in the fall.

Gold also said there are plans to add Sanskrit to the list of languages that students can use to fulfill the foreign language requirement.

“I think this would be a great opportunity for students,” Gold said. “This is a great step for Princeton, but only the first step. We are providing a lectureship which will hopefully be renewable, but we don’t even have that certainty yet.”

Many students expressed support for the new Sanskrit offerings.

Nabil Shaikh ’17 said that the addition of Sanskrit to the curriculum is an important step to having a premier classics department that values broad humanistic studies, while Jason Golfinos ’17, who plans to pursue a linguistics certificate, said that any self-respecting linguistics department must have a Sanskrit teacher.

“It would be like having an English department without anyone that teaches Shakespeare,” he said.