Francis Cody
Francis Cody, Ph.D. (University of Michigan, 2007)
Assistant Professor, 50% UTM Anthropology, 50% Asian Institute (MCIS)
(416) 946-8988 (MCIS)
(905) 569-4295 (UTM)
Office: MCIS 269S and HSC 358
Field: Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology, Critical Social Theory, Activism, Media Studies, Postcolonial State Formation, Public Sphere, Politics; Tamilnadu, India
Research
My research focuses on written language and the social dynamics of collective political action in southern India. In my first project, I brought these interests to bear on a study of literacy activism, citizenship, and social movement politics in rural Tamilnadu. My second project is centered on the daily newspaper market, and it traces the emergence of populist politics through print-mediated publicity in Tamil cities and small towns. Both of these projects are concerned with developing a theoretical approach that might grasp modes of collective agency which escape our standard vocabularies of community, civil society, and governmentality. I have been working on Tamilnadu in southern India for over a decade now. Taken as a whole, my work contributes to the transdisciplinary project of elaborating a critical social theory of communication in the postcolonial world.
Publications
Book
Forthcoming. The Light of Knowledge: Activism and Writing in India. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Articles and Chapters
2011. "Publics and Politics" Annual Review of Anthropology, 40:37-52.
2011. “Vaacippin Inavaraiviyal: Dinathanthi – Dinamalar Adippadaiyil Amaiyum Uraiyaadal.” (Tamil version of “Daily Wires and Daily Blossoms” translated by N. Manoharan) Maatruveli. 7:41-70.
2011. "Echoes of the Teashop in a Tamil Newspaper." Language and Communication, Special Issue: Mediatized Processes in Contemporary Societies, edited by Asif Agha, 31(2):243-254.
2011. "Arivoli's Humanism: Literacy Activism and the Senses of Enlightenment." In World without Walls: Being Human, Being Tamil, C. Kanaganayakam, R. Cheran, D. Ambalavanar, eds. Toronto: TSAR. (peer reviewed)
2010. "Linguistic Anthropology at the End of the Naughts: A Review of 2009." American Anthropologist, 112(2):200-207
2009. "Daily Wires and Daily Blossoms: Cultivating Regimes of Circulation in Tamil India's Newspaper Revolution," Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19(2): 286-309.
2009. "Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature in rural Tamil India." Cultural Anthropology 24(3): 347-380.
Book Reviews
2012. Review of Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic: Democratic Practice in South India, by Bernard Bate, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 22(1):126-127.
2008. Review of Little India: Diaspora, Time and Ethnolinguistic Belonging in Hindu Mauritius, by Patrick Eisenlohr, Language in Society, 37(5): 741-744.
