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Faculty Fellow

Whitney Cox

Associate Professor, South Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago

Biography

Whitney Cox’s main interests are in the literary and intellectual history of southern India in the early second millennium CE. Within that broad range, his research has concentrated on Sanskrit kāvya and poetic theory, the history of the Śaiva religion, and medieval Tamil literature and epigraphy, especially that of the Coḻa dynastic state. Cox is also interested in the practice of literary translation and critical edition.

To learn more about Whitney Cox's research and publications, please visit his profile page at the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations.

wmcox@uchicago.edu

Topics

Featured Project

Hemachandra, Leaf from a Jain manuscript, 13th century

Entanglements of the Indian Past

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2021 – 2026
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Projects

The CEDAR Project: Critical Editions for Digital Analysis and Research

A screenshot of the CEDAR database shows sophisticated digital analysis of a biblical text.

The CEDAR Project: Critical Editions for Digital Analysis and Research

This project aims to produce open-access critical editions of four key textual corpora: Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Gilgamesh, the Book of Genesis, and a body of Middle Bengali poetry.
The CEDAR project aims to produce critical editions for the digital age. It brings together six faculty members from four different departments and schools in the University of Chicago as well as scholarly advisors from beyond the University. The textual foci of the project are four distinct ...

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Sastram

Sastram

This interdisciplinary collaboration examined the forms and intersecting histories of South Asian practices of knowledge, with a focus on the geographical and historical spread of cultural norms and technologies.
The Sanskrit word śāstra, from a verb meaning “to discipline, to govern,” supplies a blanket term for a vast and heterogeneous spectrum of Southern Asian texts and the social forms in which these have been propagated. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the very basis of South Asian ...

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Imperial Interstices: Agents of Eurasian Interaction in Late Antiquity

Imperial Interstices: Agents of Eurasian Interaction in Late Antiquity

By investigating premodern interstitial regions of the Eurasian landmass as major centers of production, consumption, and influence, this project laid the groundwork for an integrated history of Eurasian late antiquity.
When we look at maps of the premodern world we see centralized empires divided by bold lines. In fact, we are learning that the boundaries between empires were more often vibrant and fluid zones for intense production and exchange. This is particularly so for the less studied areas of contact ...

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