David L. Szanton

Visiting Professor of the Graduate Centre at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa; President of Ethnic Arts Foundation

Born in September 1938, David Szanton is an outstanding social anthropologist in Art and Society and is proficient in four languages. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1960 and proceeded to study Sculpture and Art History at the Rome Academy of Fine Arts from 1960 to 1961. He obtained his Master’s degree in Social Science and Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1964 and 1970 respectively. Szanton has been the Executive Director of International and Area Studies at the University of California, Berkeley since 1991. Before this appointment, he served in the American Social Science Research Council from 1975 to 1991. Since 2001, he has mainly studied Arts and Higher Education in India, the Philippines, South Africa and the United States. He has also served as a consultant in many prestigious universities and related institutions. He is currently committed to study Mithila painting and has published extensively in India and curated many exhibitions around it. His major works include: The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines (2002); Mithila Painting: The Evolution of an Art Form (co-edited with Malini Bakshi, 2007); Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India (co-edited with Aurogeeta Das, 2017); Estancia, Iloilo: The First One Hundred Years (co-edited with Jimmy G. Palmaira, 2018). His new book, The Politics of Mithila Painting, is in preparation for publication.