Kenyon students know that if they're intrigued by India--its history, politics, cultures, or dynamic role on the world stage--their first stop should be the office of Wendy Singer, professor of history, who will convince them through sheer enthusiasm that their next stop should be India itself.

Singer returns to India as often as she can, extending a network of scholarly contacts and friends who, in turn, befriend Kenyon juniors when they arrive for a semester or year of study--not to mention Kenyon graduates when they arrive on Fulbright scholarships to teach or pursue research. Singer's own research, growing out of regular stays in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh over the past twenty years, involves Indian elections, and rural politics in particular. In 1992, India passed a constitutional amendment requiring that one-third of local governing representatives be women, with the result that today some two million women hold elected offices in the country. "This is extraordinary," says Singer. "No other country can compare to that. I became interested in the historical process that led to these characteristics of Indian democracy."

Singer has had some remarkable experiences, including an audience with the Dalai Lama, which inspired an ongoing study of democratic movements among Tibetans in exile. As a social historian, she is most interested in "changes in the everyday lives of average people." History "is about change over time," she says. "It can even be about what happened yesterday, or maybe just a minute ago."

Her other great professorial passion is international studies, and Singer has at times directed Kenyon's popular major in the field. As the College's National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship, she used the post to create a new course for majors. "Globalization and Migration--at Home" takes students into communities in central Ohio to study oral histories of immigrants from such countries as Somalia, India, Mexico, and Russia.