Anthropology professor was leading a U-G seminar

Isabelle Clark-Decès, a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University whose work focussed on Tamils, died after a fall last week in a Mussoorie village in Uttarakhand. She was leading a seminar titled ‘At Home (And Abroad) in the Indian Himalayas’ for undergraduate students, the university said in a statement.

“Isabelle Clark-Decès was known for her analytical rigour and detailed knowledge of religion and kinship of southern India,” said Carolyn Rouse, a Professor of Anthropology and department chair. “Some consider Isabelle one of the top scholars of Tamil tradition and ritual practices in the world. In addition, she proposed a theory of Tamil subjectivity that was profoundly distinct from Western subjectivity, where identities are generally understood as bound and stable.” Clark-Decès made her first trip to India in 1977, travelling alone at the age of 20, by bus and train through Iran and Afghanistan, from Istanbul.

Her books include Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals (as Isabelle Nabokov); No One Cries for the Dead: Tamil Dirges, Rowdy Songs and Graveyard Petitions; and The Encounter Never Ends: A Return to the Field of Tamil Rituals.