I received the Call for Abstracts below from Scott Stroud (University of Texas at Austin). He added, “The call for abstracts is deliberately wide-ranging, since there are so many useful angles to consider here. Approaches from a range of different scholarly fields are also welcome.”
It sounds like a fascinating project, and I encourage our blog’s readers to consider submitting abstracts!
Call for Abstracts
Pragmatism and India: Histories and Futures
Edited by Scott R. Stroud & Danish Hamid
Pragmatism is an American tradition of philosophy that has made wide-ranging impacts into American politics, educational practices, and intellectual debates. It includes a diverse array of thinkers as John Dewey, William James, Charles S. Peirce, Jane Addams, Richard Rorty, Cornel West, W.E.B. DuBois, and more. It has also traveled to various parts of the world, growing and evolving and featuring in debates in international arenas. For instance, John Dewey’s students from China such as Hu Shih spawned many political reforms in China in the early 1900s, and set the context for Mao’s own philosophy of revolution. William James had followers and interlocutors who developed his vision of pragmatism in new ways in Italy and Britain.
Recent attention is turning to the applicability of pragmatism to India. What stories wait to be told if we investigate the historical connections of pragmatism to India, or consider its usefulness and limitations in engaging contemporary problems in Indian democracy?
This edited book project seeks planned chapters that explore a range of pragmatism’s past and future connections to India. There are a range of approaches that articles can take. A few useful paths to consider are as follows:
- Historical articles that expand what we know about a figure in India and their connection to the pragmatist tradition, or that examine a pragmatist thinker’s engagement with Indian figures and traditions, such as Ambedkar and Buddhism. Such studies might focus on Dewey’s knowledge or writings on various Indian traditions, or on Indian figures’ reception of Dewey (such as Nehru, Gandhi, or Ambedkar), or on William James’ knowledge of Indian philosophy, or focus on how a thinker like Phule or Ambedkar represent a novel addition to the pragmatist tradition.
- Comparative or constructive articles that emphasize a novel and creative engagement between a specific form of pragmatist thought and Indian thinkers and traditions, such as Buddhism or Ambedkar. These studies might usefully examine specific topics or themes across traditions, such as the role of experience in education in Dewey and early Buddhism, or education and democracy from Ambedkar’s pragmatism, or explore relationships, resonances or dissonances between the discourse on race and caste which engages pragmatist thinkers such as Jane Addams, Alain Locke, or later (neo-pragmatist) figures like Richard Rorty or Cornel West, whose work on race and democracy might resonate with caste and the social thought of a Phule, Gandhi or Ambedkar.
- Contemporary applications of pragmatism to problems or topics in India. For instance, what is the usefulness of Dewey’s thought for India’s future? Might Peirce’s semiotics address a problem with language in Nyaya thought? Studies in this category might use Dewey’s notion of education to evaluate contemporary approaches to education in India, for instance, or enunciate problems in Indian society with a pragmatist account of democracy as a way of life.
- Pragmatism beyond the Americas. scholarship that explores themes in philosophical traditions and thinkers which can be usefully interpreted as characteristically pragmatist in nature. Rather than tracing direct historical contact or influence, these studies would ask which Indian philosophical traditions or figures independently exhibit pragmatist commitments, such as an emphasis on experience over abstract system, the practical consequences of belief, fallibilism, or the inseparability of thought from action and social life. These may be prior to or apart from any encounter with American pragmatism. A representative theme might be the Buddha’s pragmatic orientation toward suffering and the famous refusal of metaphysical speculation, Nagarjuna’s treatment of concepts as tools rather than final truths, the Carvaka school’s empiricism, debates on the relationship between meaning and action, or later figures such as Phule, Ambedkar, Vivekananda or Iqbal considered as independent architects of a pragmatist sensibility rooted in Indian social and religious life.
We are interested in a wide range of studies that imaginatively explore the potentials of looking at Indian problems, traditions, and authors in connection with the varied and diverse pragmatist tradition. Scholars can take a range of approaches stemming from a variety of disciplines: philosophy, history, rhetorical studies, and more.
Interested authors should submit 500-word abstract and title for their proposed chapter, along with a short author bio, on or before January 1, 2027 to the editors of this book project:
Scott R. Stroud, University of Texas at Austin, sstroud@austin.utexas.edu
Danish Hamid, Nayanta University, Danish.Hamid@nayanta.edu.in
Planned timeline:
Chapter abstracts submitted: January 1, 2027
Full chapters (7,000-10,000 words) from accepted authors submitted: January 1, 2028.