Princeton Professor Dies After Fall In India

PRINCETON, NJ — A Princeton University professor was killed in an accidental fall while leading a seminar in India last week. Isabelle Clark-Decès, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University and a widely respected scholar of South Asia, died while leading a seminar in the village of Mussoorie, India on Thursday, June 29, according to the university. She was 61.

She was directing the PIIRS Global Seminar titled “At Home (And Abroad) in the Indian Himalayas,” according to a post on the university’s website. It was a six-week seminar for a small group of undergraduates. It was one of seven international seminars this summer organized by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

Details of the accident haven’t been released, but a university spokesperson told philly.com she was alone when it happened.

Clark-Decès joined the faculty in 1996, according to the university. She traveled to South Asia numerous times as part of her research into the Tamils of South India and Sri Lanka.

She taught undergraduate and graduate courses on India, ritual, kinship theory and ethnography; advised doctoral candidates; and directed the Program in South Asian Studies since its establishment in 2007. She was born in Paris, and earned her bachelor’s degree and Ph.D., both in anthropology, from the University of California-Berkeley.

• “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.”

Her latest book, “The ‘Right’ Spouse: Preferential Marriages in Tamil Nadu,” is an ethnography of close kin marriage in Tamil Nadu. She also edited “A Companion to the Anthropology of India,” a volume of essays that explores the configurations of modernity and globalization in India.

She is survived by a daughter, Penelope Nabokov, of Berkeley; two brothers, Pierre Taboulet and Philippe Taboulet, of France; and longtime partner Frederick Smith.

Memorial donations may be made to the environmental charity of the donor’s choice. A blog honoring Clark-Decès’ life and legacy can be found here.

Patch file photo