Ainslie Embree Collection at Dalhousie

2019 is off to a terrific start thanks to an incredibly generous gift to Dalhousie University: the personal library of Dr. Ainslie Embree -- author, professor, researcher, pedagog, and innovator in the teaching of South Asian history, religion, politics and society. Dr. Embree passed away in June 2017 at the age of 96, and his surviving family has generously gifted the scholar's personal library collection to Dalhousie University. The books -- nearly 1500 volumes -- have now made their way from New York to Halifax, and are in the final phases of processing.

Ainslie Embree was born outside of Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia in 1921 and attended Dalhousie University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1941, and later Pine Hill Divinity Hall (now Atlantic School of Theology), and returned for graduate studies at Dalhousie after his RCAF service in World War II. Dr. Embree lived in India throughout the first decade of the country's existence as an independent nation (1947-57), witnessing one of the most turbulent and monumentally important moments in the history of South Asia.

Ainslie Embree in 1941

Embree's career then flourished at Columbia University where he helped to establish a program dedicated to the study of South Asia. In addition to his regular teaching, he served over the decades -- to name only a few of his positions -- as President of the American Association for Asian Studies, President of the American Institute for Indian Studies, and at Columbia as Chair of the Middle East Languages and Cultures Department, Director of the Southern Asian Institute, and as Acting Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia; he served as well as Cultural Counselor in the US Embassy at Delhi and consultant to the American Ambassador in India.

Embree's publications -- treating South Asian religion, culture, politics and language particularly of the colonial period into the 1990s -- can hardly be listed adequately here. Apart from his many edited and co-edited volumes on South Asian history, literature and politics, he has authored Imagining India: Essays on Indian History (1989), Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in India (1990), India's Search for National Identity (1988), and many others.

Columbia University South Asia Institute Obituary
Ainslie Ambree Interviewed following Assassination of Indira Gandhi, 1984
Wikipedia Bio
Interview by Mark Juergensmeyer

Dr. Embree's personal library has arrived at Dalhousie just as we strengthen and expand South Asia as an area of special concern within Religious Studies, History and the larger Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Dalhousie. The 2018-19 year saw the launching of a new pair of courses on South Asian Religion and Politics, co-taught by Profs. Colin Mitchell (History) and Christopher Austin (Religious Studies); these courses will be offered again in the 2019-20 year: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh. A proposal is now under consideration to expand the existing Minor in Middle East Studies, housed in the Dept. of History, to create a Minor in South Asian and Middle East Studies; both first year and second year Sanskrit will be offered at Dalhousie again in the 2019-20 year, as well as other courses on Hinduism and South Asian religions.



Dalhousie Religious Studies, History, Classics, the Killam library, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Dalhousie University extends heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the surviving family of Dr. Embree for their priceless gift of this book collection. Much thanks as well go to Jennifer Lambert at Killam Library, Jack Hawley at Columbia, and Donna Edwards for their assistance in bringing this incredible collection to Dalhousie.

Christopher Austin
Dalhousie University
Dept. of Classics (Religious Studies)