United States Naval Academy Archives

Dr. Hayden Bellenoit is a professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He is a legal and social historian of modern South Asia. His research focuses on colonial state formation, the histories of scribal communities, and the broader impact of colonial legal systems upon Indian social, religious, and cultural traditions. Dr. Bellenoit received his MA from Wheaton College and his DPhil in modern history from Oxford University. At the Naval Academy, he teaches courses on modern India and Pakistan. He has also been a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, where he is a life member.

Dr. Bellenoit is the author of two books: Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860–1920 (2007); and The Formation of the Colonial State in India: Scribes, Paper and Taxes, 1760–1860 (2017). His articles have appeared in top peer-reviewed academic journals such as Modern Asian Studies, Law and History Review, South Asian History and Culture, and Indian Law Review. He is currently completing an article on how Mughal-era legal customs were read into the codification of Hindu property law and inheritance.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Bellenoit is conducting research for his third book, “Judges, Case Law and Jurisprudence: The Legal Construction of Caste in India, c. 1830–1950”. This will be the first book to fully address the question of modern constructions of caste/social hierarchy in India as a result of the broader phenomena of colonial law. It will carefully examine how colonial case law, the training of Indian judges and lawyers, and the resultant jurisprudence, all broadly combined to shape modern understandings about the relationship between caste and law.

Originally from Austin, Texas, Clara Navarro is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. At the academy, Clara majored in Chinese and researched in the anthropology department where she published on the subject of gender relations in the military.

Upon graduation, Clara served in the United States Navy aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln where she was the deputy public affairs officer and principal assistant of the Media Department. Along with the crew, she completed a record-breaking around-the-world deployment from Norfolk, Virginia, to San Diego, California. Returning to land, she worked for two years as the media officer for the Europe, Africa, Central Navy Region headquarters in Naples, Italy. In this role, she coordinated communication between eight naval bases and seven host-nation embassies.

Honorably discharged from the Navy in 2022, Clara then earned a post-baccalaureate, pre-medical certificate at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., fulfilling the course requirements to apply to medical school. She is currently applying to medical schools across America.

Working with India’s National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Clara’s Fulbright-Nehru project is researching integrative mental healthcare services in the South Indian state of Karnataka. In a three-phase approach, her project is being executed first through archival research and clinical observation, then via interviews with practitioners and patients, and lastly, by reflection and synthesis. She is also assessing the hybrid practice of Ayurveda and allopathic mental healthcare that is growing in prevalence in India by focusing on both its successes and limitations, as well as on its impact on the community.