{"id":18936,"date":"2023-02-03T13:55:59","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T13:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/?p=18936"},"modified":"2023-02-03T13:55:59","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T13:55:59","slug":"member-profile-rosane-rocher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/member-profile-rosane-rocher\/","title":{"rendered":"Member Profile: Rosane Rocher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rosane Rocher<\/strong> is a Sanskritist and a historian of Indology, and a Professor Emerita of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she served as department chair, director of the National Resource Center for South Asia, and founding director of the Program in Asian American Studies. She and her husband, Ludo Rocher, the late W. Norman Brown Professor Emeritus of South Asia Studies at the same institution, were jointly awarded the 2015 prize of the Fondation Colette Caillat of the Institut de France \u201cfor their latest two joint books, The Making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company <\/em>(2012) and Founders of Western Indology: August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Henry Thomas Colebrooke in Correspondence 1820\u20131837 <\/em>(2013), and for their lifelong, signal contributions to Sanskrit studies and the history of Indology.\u201d She is currently the president of the Ludo and Rosane Rocher Foundation, which fosters American scholarship on classical Indology.<\/p>\n

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How did you first hear of the Society?
\n<\/strong><\/em>I cannot recall how and when I first heard of the Society. It was an inherent part of my veering from western Classics to Indology as a double M.A. student and Ph.D. candidate at the Free University of Brussels in my native Belgium. The first time I had an active engagement with the Society was when I conducted research for my first biography of an Indologist, Alexander Hamilton, who was an original member of the Society.<\/p>\n

What encouraged you to join?
\n<\/strong><\/em>Colebrooke!\u00a0 Kit Naylor, a pillar of the RAS and a descendant of its founder, H.T. Colebrooke, sought advice from fellow members of the Society about a scholar who might examine Colebrooke\u2019s papers in his possession and evaluate their potential interest. I was the happy recipient of his invitation. My husband, an admirer of Colebrooke\u2019s work on Hindu law, who had long wondered where the Colebrooke family papers might be, was as enthusiastic as I was. To us, they were manna from heaven! Kit put the papers on temporary deposit at the RAS so that I might examine them at leisure. I spent a summer going through them at the Society, then in Queen Anne Street, where I became acquainted with the staff and visitors. The Society became a living entity, which it was natural I joined.<\/p>\n

What would you say are the benefits of being a fellow of the RAS?
\n<\/strong><\/em>For an overseas member like me, the RAS is a port-of-call, to which I pay a visit every time I am in London, even when no project of mine requires it. From a distance, its lectures (now on Zoom), its journal, and other publications keep me informed of scholarly trends in the UK. I also believe that it behoves scholars of Asia to support and expand the continuing mission of the RAS. The Society is at a point of inflection. The last generation of returned colonial servants who constituted most of its initial membership is dwindling. At the same time, increased global mobility has fostered in the UK the growth of generations of people who maintain an interest in the histories and cultures of their Asian forebears.<\/p>\n

What is your favourite item from the RAS collections?<\/strong>
\n<\/em>The Archives, every little bit of them! \u00a0Since the Colebrooke biography, I have had occasion repeatedly to consult them for my latest biographies of Indologists, For the Sake of the Vedas: The Anglo-German Life of Friedrich Rosen 1805\u20131837<\/em> (2020) and A shunned Indologist: Ludwig Poley 1805\u00ad\u20131885 <\/em>(in final draft). The RAS staff has been of wonderful support, responding to queries and keeping scholarship served during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Ludo and Rosane Rocher Foundation
\nwww.rocherfoundation.org<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a0The Word Illuminated: Form and Function of Qur\u02beanic Manuscripts<\/a><\/h2>\n

Subscribers may be interested in this new Open Access \u00a0publication from the Smithsonian Institution which can be downloaded for free. ( Alison Ohta, our director, is one of the contributors).<\/p>\n

Simon\u00a0Rettig\u00a0and Sana Mirza, eds.,\u00a0The Word Illuminated: Form and Function of Qur\u02beanic Manuscripts from the Seventh to Seventeenth Centuries<\/em>, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2023.<\/p>\n

The volume results from the symposium held in December 2017 \u00a0which was held in conjunction with the exhibition\u00a0The Art of the Qur\u2019an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts<\/em> at the Smithsonian\u2019s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (part of the National Museum of Asian Art).<\/p>\n

It is available for free download at:\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5479\/si.21948098<\/a><\/p>\n

Print copies will be available later this year.<\/p>\n

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Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n

Foreword<\/p>\n

Massumeh Farhad<\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction: Current Perspectives on Qur\u02beanic Manuscripts<\/p>\n

Simon\u00a0Rettig\u00a0and Sana Mirza<\/em><\/p>\n

As\u1e6d\u0101r al-awwal\u012bn: The Qur\u02beanic Handwritten Tradition and Its Beginnings<\/p>\n

Fran\u00e7ois D\u00e9roche<\/em><\/p>\n

Ghaznavid Imperial Qur\u02bean Manuscripts: The Shaping of a Local Style<\/p>\n

Alya Karame<\/em><\/p>\n

Illuminated Qur\u02bean Manuscripts of Late Medieval Rum (Thirteenth to Fourteenth Centuries)<\/p>\n

Cailah Jackson<\/em><\/p>\n

A Luxury Market? Yaqut al-Musta\u02bfsimi\u2019s Qur\u02beans<\/p>\n

Nourane Ben Azzouna<\/em><\/p>\n

Sultan \u00d6ljeit\u00fc\u2019s Baghdad Qur\u02bean: A Life History<\/p>\n

Sheila S. Blair<\/em><\/p>\n

Mamluk Qur\u02beans: Splendor and Opulence of the Islamic Book<\/p>\n

Alison Aplin Ohta<\/em><\/p>\n

A Sixteenth- Century Shiraz Masterpiece: Chester Beatty\u2019s Ruzbihan Qur\u02bean<\/p>\n

Elaine Wright<\/em><\/p>\n

The Qur\u02beanic Soundscape of Mimar Sinan\u2019s Mosques: A Survey of Recitation Programs and the Unusual Case of the Had\u0131m \u0130brahim Pa\u015fa Mosque at Silivrikap\u0131<\/p>\n

Nina Macaraig<\/em><\/p>\n

The Rise of the\u00a0En\u02bfam: Manuscripts of Selections of Suras in the Early Sixteenth- Century Ottoman Empire<\/p>\n

Simon\u00a0Rettig<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rosane Rocher is a Sanskritist and a historian of Indology, and a Professor Emerita of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she served as department chair, director of the National Resource Center for South Asia, and founding director of the Program in Asian American Studies. She and her husband, Ludo Rocher, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2959,2746,2351,2352],"class_list":["post-18936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-about-the-society","tag-blog-update","tag-member-profile","tag-rosane-rocher"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6845"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18938,"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18936\/revisions\/18938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}