Faculty Lecture Series: Joel Lee

Associate Professor of Anthropology Joel Lee presents “On the Art of Caste Concealment” as part of the spring 2025 Faculty Lecture Series. Lectures will begin at 4:15 p.m. and take place in the Lawrence Hall Auditorium (L-231). Enter via the main WCMA entrance or through the Art Department corridor. Students, faculty, staff, community members – all are welcome!

Caste structures the life chances of a fifth of humanity. Notoriously resilient, the social form has accommodated social and political reform in South Asia while remaining inescapable in practice: you cannot change the caste into which you are born. But is there room for clandestine maneuver?

R.K. Chauhan (a pseudonym) ascended the police ranks in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh from one of its lowliest stations to one of its highest, retiring as a district superintendent. Over the same period he underwent a caste transformation of sorts; by his own account, he was born Dalit (‘untouchable’) but became Rajput, taking on a title, manner and comportment associated with that dominant community—with unexpected consequences. Anchored in interviews with Chauhan over several years and part of a larger book project on caste concealment in urban north India, this talk follows the career of Chauhan and the critical reflections on social marking and unmarking that his experience as a doubly undercover observer leads him to elaborate.

Joel Lee is the author of Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism and Underground Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and co-editor, with K. Satyanarayana, of Concealing Caste: Passing and Personhood in Dalit Literature (Oxford University Press, 2023).

This talk is presented as part of the Spring 2025 Faculty Lecture Series. The series was founded in 1911 by Catherine Mariotti Pratt, the spouse of a faculty member who wanted to “relieve the tedium of long New England winters with an opportunity to hear Williams professors talk about issues that really mattered to them.” From these humble and lighthearted beginnings, the Faculty Lecture Series has grown to become an important forum for tenured professors to share their latest research with the larger intellectual community of the college.

The Faculty Lecture Series is organized by the faculty members of the Lecture Committee. The aim of the series is to present big ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. All lectures begin at 4:15 p.m. They are free and open to the public.