Lee Siegel (professor and novelist)

Infobox Writer
name = Lee Siegel


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birthdate = Birth date and age|1945|7|22|mf=y
birthplace = Los Angeles, California
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occupation = professor, novelist
nationality = USA
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genre = fiction, campus novel
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Lee A. Siegel (born 1945, Los Angeles, California) is a novelist and professor of religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His 1999 novel, "Love in a Dead Language," was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a bestseller in India. It was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

He studied comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley and fine arts at Columbia University. He received his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford for a dissertation in the field of Sanskrit. He then was hired by the University of Hawaii as Professor of Religious Studies, where he has taught ever since.

In 1988 Siegel was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow [ [http://www.gf.org/88fellow.html U.S. and Canadian Fellows] , John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fellows page, 1988] . He has received numerous fellowships and grants including five Senior Research Fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Smithsonian Institute (1979, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1996), four research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council (1982, 1985, 1987, 1990) and one from the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. In addition Professor Siegel has been two Presidential Awards for Excellence in Teaching (1986 and 1996). He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation, and twice at the Bellagio Study Center (1990 and 2003). He also was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College of Oxford University (1997).

His son is film actor Sebastian Siegel.

cholarly Works

From 1978 until the late 1990s, Siegel published scholarly studies of Indian love poetry, comedy, horror, and magic. These books include:

*"Sacred and Profane Dimensions of Love in Indian Traditions as Exemplified in the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva" (Oxford University South Asian Studies Series)(1978)
*"Dream-symbolism in the sr amanic tradition: two psychoanalytical studies in Jinist and Buddhist dream legends" (with Jagdish P. Sharma) (1980)
*"Fires of Love, Waters of Peace in Indian Culture" (1983)
*"Laughing Matters. Comic Tradition in India" (1987)
*"Net of Magic. Wonders and Deceptions in India" (1991)
*"City of Dreadful Night. A Story about Horror and the Macabre in India" (1995)

Novels

In 1999, Siegel published his first novel, "Love in a Dead Language." It was named the New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

His novels are:

*"Love in a Dead Language: A Romance" (1999)
*"Love and Other Games of Chance: A Novelty" (2003)
*"Who Wrote the Book of Love? A Chronicle of the Sexual Life of an American Boy in the 1950s" (2005)
*"Love and the Incredibly Old Man: A Novel" (2008)

Notes

External links

* [http://www.hawaii.edu/religion/cvs/siegel.pdf Curriculum vitae at University of Hawaii]