DR. R. DON ADAMS: ETHICS IN LITERATURE

During his nine months in India, Dr. R. Don Adams Professor of English, has been working on a book project on ethics in modern literature. One part of the book concerns the work of the modern British-American novelist Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986), who became associated with the Vedanta Center in Los Angeles in the 1940s and studied under a guru there, Swami Prabhavananda, for nearly thirty years. Together they translated several major Indian religious and philosophical texts from Sanskrit into English. He is interested in the manner in which Isherwood used Indian philosophical concepts to question and critique Western assumptions and understanding of the self and how this played out in his creative and autobiographical writing. 

To understand the background of this better, he has been studying the relationship between Indian and Western philosophical systems with Dr. Jose Nandhikara, the head of the philosophy program at Christ University in Bangalore where Dr. Adams had been based. Professor Nandhikarka has invited him to submit some of his research to the Journal of Dharma, which Nandhikarka edits, and which is focused on intercultural dialogue in matters of philosophy and religion and is sponsored by the pontifical seminary adjoining Christ University. In addition, during the year Dr. Adams worked with the English graduate students at Christ on their thesis projects and has traveled to a number of international humanities conferences throughout India where he has been invited to speak on his research.