Shows / New Books in South Asian Studies
New Books in South Asian Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Douglas Ober, "Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Received wisdom has it that Buddhism disappeared from India, the land of its birth, between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, long forgotten until…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tania James, "Loot: A Novel" (Knopf, 2023)
Abbas is just seventeen years old when his gifts as a woodcarver come to the attention of Tipu Sultan, and he is drawn into service at the palace in order to…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tanvi Srivastava, trans., "The War Diary of Asha-san: From Tokyo to Netaji's Indian National Army" (Harper Collins, 2022)
On a trip many years ago to New Delhi, I was struck by an official memorial to Subhas Chandra Bose, the wartime leader of the Indian National Army, the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Francis Cody, "The News Event: Popular Sovereignty in the Age of Deep Mediatization" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Not merely the act of representing events with words or images, a "news event" is the reciprocal relationship between the events being reported in the news and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Malini Ranganathan et al., "Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City (Cornell UP, 2023) illuminates how corruption is fundamental to global storytelling…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Maitrayee Chaudhuri and Manish Thakur, "Doing Theory: Locations, Hierarchies and Disjunctions" (Orient Blackswan, 2018)
We live in times where theory is often understood as irrelevant in the real world. It appears to have no practical results. This has been further complicated…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Loriliai Biernacki, "The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In the early 11th century, the Kashmiri philosopher Abhinavagupta proposed panentheism-seeing the divine as both immanent in the world and at the same time as…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Scott R. Stroud, "The Evolution of Pragmatism in India: Ambedkar, Dewey, and the Rhetoric of Reconstruction" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Scott R. Stroud's The Evolution of Pragmatism in India: Ambedkar, Dewey, and the Rhetoric of Reconstruction (U Chicago Press, 2023) is a philosophical…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
J. Daniel Elam, "World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics" (Fordham UP, 2020)
World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics (Fordham UP, 2020) recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ashok Gopal, "A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B. R. Ambedkar" (Navayana, 2023)
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) is perhaps the most iconised historical figure in India. Born into a caste deemed ‘unfit for human association’, he came to…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Anne Gerritsen and Burton Cleetus, "Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000 (Bloomsbury, 2023): Introducing materiality into…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Burkhard Schnepel and Julia Verne, "Cargoes in Motion: Materiality and Connectivity across the Indian Ocean" (Ohio UP, 2022)
Cargoes in Motion: Materiality and Connectivity across the Indian Ocean (Ohio University Press, 2022) is an innovative collection of essays that foregrounds…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Baba Padmanji, "Yamuna's Journey" (Speaking Tiger Books, 2022)
In 1856, the East India Company imposed the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, allowing widows to remarry after their husband’s death. The Act was controversial at…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Elise Coquereau-Saouma and Daniel Raveh, "The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya" (Routledge, 2022)
This book engages in a dialogue with Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (K.C. Bhattacharyya, KCB, 1875-1949) and opens a vista to contemporary Indian philosophy.KCB…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Philip Gooding, "Droughts, Floods, and Global Climatic Anomalies in the Indian Ocean World" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
Droughts, Floods, and Global Climatic Anomalies in the Indian Ocean World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) explores histories of droughts and floods in the Indian…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Srila Roy, "Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India (Duke UP, 2022), Srila Roy maps the rapidly transforming terrain of gender and sexual…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Rila Mukherjee, "India in the Indian Ocean World: From the Earliest Times to 1800 CE" (Springer, 2022)
India in the Indian Ocean World: From the Earliest Times to 1800 CE (Springer, 2022) integrates the latest scholarly literature on the entire Indian Ocean…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Waqas Butt, "Life Beyond Waste: Work and Infrastructure in Urban Pakistan" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Over the last several decades, life in Lahore has been undergoing profound transformations, from rapid and uneven urbanization to expanding state institutions…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Moyukh Chatterjee, "Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities" (Duke UP, 2023)
In 2002, armed Hindu mobs attacked Muslims in broad daylight in the west Indian state of Gujarat. The pogrom, which was widely seen over television, left more…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Mark LeVine, "We'll Play Till We Die: Journeys Across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World" (U California Press, 2022)
In We'll Play till We Die: Journeys across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World (University of California Press, 2022), Mark LeVine, Professor…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Divya Cherian, "Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia" (U California Press, 2023)
Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (U California Press, 2023) explores the question of what it meant to be…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
The Politics of Community-Making in New Urban India
How is urban India changing? And how do communities inhabit and transform India’s new cities and urban spaces? In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Nienke Boer, "The Briny South: Displacement and Sentiment in the Indian Ocean World" (Duke UP, 2023)
In The Briny South: Displacement and Sentiment in the Indian Ocean World (Duke University Press, 2023), Nienke Boer examines the legal and literary narratives…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sebanti Chatterjee, "Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Sebanti Chatterjee's book Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality (Bloomsbury, 2023) is about sacred and secular choirs in Goa and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Cristina-Ioana Dragomir, "Power on the Move: Adivasi and Roma Accessing Social Justice" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Throughout centuries of persecution and marginalization, the Roma and Adivasi have been viewed as both victims and fighters, as royals and paupers, beasts and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Leyla Jagiella, "Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey" (Hurst, 2022)
In the powerful book Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey (Hurst Publishers, 2022), Leyla Jagiella reflects on her story as a trans Muslim living…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
The International Association of Sanskrit Studies
The newly-elected first female president of the The International Association of Sanskrit Studies, Dr. Dipti Tripathi discusses Association’s genesis, mandate…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Supurna Banerjee et al., "The Violent Domestic Law: Its Practice and Strategies of Survival" (Zubaan Academic, 2022)
In 2005, after considerable campaigning by women’s groups, the Indian government brought in an important new law, the Protection of Women from Domestic…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Mrinalini Sinha and Manu Goswami, "Political Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Mrinalini Sinha and Manu Goswami's Political Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India (Bloomsbury, 2022) reconsiders India's 20th century though a specific focus…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Rupal Oza, "Semiotics of Rape: Sexual Subjectivity and Violation in Rural India" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Semiotics of Rape: Sexual Subjectivity and Violation in Rural India (Duke UP, 2022), Rupal Oza follows the social life of rape in rural northwest India to…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Francis Xavier Clooney, "Saint Joseph in South India: Poetry, Mission and Theology in Costanzo Gioseffo Beschi's Tēmpāvaṇi" (Brill, 2022)
Costanzo Gioseffo Beschi was an Italian Jesuit who worked in South India from 1710 to 1747. A brilliant scholar of Tamil, his works include hymns, instructions…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Chandra Mallampalli, "South Asia's Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim" (Oxford UP, 2023)
South Asia is home to more than a billion Hindus and half a billion Muslims. But the region is also home to substantial Christian communities, some dating…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
K. N. Sunandan, "Caste, Knowledge, and Power: Ways of Knowing in Twentieth Century Malabar" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Caste, Knowledge, and Power: Ways of Knowing in Twentieth-Century Malabar (Cambridge UP, 2023) investigates the transformations of caste practices in twentieth…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Scott Carney and Jason Miklian, "The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation" (Ecco Press, 2022)
In November 1970, a storm set a collision course with the most densely populated coastline on Earth. Over the course of just a few hours, the Great Bhola…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
David Shulman and Heike Oberlin, "Two Masterpieces of Kuttiyattam: Mantrankam and Anguliyankam" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Kūṭiyāṭṭam, India’s only living traditional Sanskrit theatre, has been continually performed in Kerala for at least a thousand years. David Shulman and Heike…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Saadia Sumbal, "Islam and Religious Change in Pakistan: Sufis and Ulema in 20th-Century South Asia" (Routledge, 2021)
Saadia Sumbal's book Islam and Religious Change in Pakistan: Sufis and Ulema in 20th-Century South Asia (Routledge, 2021) examines the history of, and the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Mitul Baruah, "Slow Disaster: Political Ecology of Hazards and Everyday Life in the Brahmaputra Valley, Assam" (Routledge, 2022)
Mitul Baruah's Slow Disaster: Political Ecology of Hazards and Everyday Life in the Brahmaputra Valley, Assam (Routledge, 2022) presents a fascinating…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
The Promise of Multispecies Justice
How might we imagine justice in times of ecological harm? How are human struggles for social justice entangled with the lives of other beings including plants…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Eberhard Guhe, "An Indian Theory of Defeasible Reasoning: The Doctrine of Upādhi in the Upādhidarpaṇa" (Harvard UP, 2022)
An Indian Theory of Defeasible Reasoning: The Doctrine of upādhi in the Upādhidarpaṇa (Harvard University Press, 2022) is the first translation of this…
New Books in South Asian StudiesReading
Swati Moitra explains how reading can be a subversive and even revolutionary act in certain socio-historical contexts. She draws especially from her own work…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ângela Barreto Xavier, "Religion and Empire in Portuguese India: Conversion, Resistance, and the Making of Goa" (SUNY Press, 2022)
How did the colonization of Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries take place? How was it related to projects for the conversion of Goan colonial…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Cao Yin, "Chinese Sojourners in Wartime Raj, 1942-45" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Since the outbreak of the Pacific War, British India had been taken as the main logistic base for China's war against the Japanese. Chinese soldiers…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Zoha Waseem, "Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial Karachi" (Oxford UP, 2022)
The police force is one of the most distrusted institutions in Pakistan, notorious for its corruption and brutality. In both colonial and postcolonial…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Alexander Jabbari, "The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Alexander Jabbari’s The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India (Cambridge University Press, 2023) narrates the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Slum Tourism and Affective Economy in Delhi, India
In Delhi, former street children guide visiting tourists around the streets that they used to inhabit and show how the NGO they work for tries to resocialise…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Aleksandar Uskokov, "The Philosophy of the Brahma-sutra: An Introduction" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
The Brahma-sutra, attributed to Badaraya (ca. 400 CE), is the canonical book of Vedanta, the philosophical tradition which became the doctrinal backbone of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Nikhil Menon, "Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
In 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi closed the Planning Commission, which he accused of stifling the country’s growth and being a holdover from the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Rajesh Veeraraghavan, "Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Reform in India" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Rajesh Veeraraghavan’s Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India (Oxford University Press, 2022) offers the first ethnographically…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
A Chat with Sanskrit Scholar John Brockington
Senior scholar John Brockington discusses his scholarship, his role in establishing key conferences, and his work on an online research archive on the spread…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Nishant Kumar, "Religious Offense and Censorship of Publications: An Enquiry Through the Prism of Indian Laws and the Judiciary" (Routledge, 2022)
Nishant Kumar's Religious Offense and Censorship of Publications: An Enquiry Through the Prism of Indian Laws and the Judiciary (Routledge, 2022) analyzes the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tony K. Stewart, "Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination" (U California Press, 2019)
There is a vast body of imaginal literature in Bengali that introduces fictional Sufi saints into the complex mythological world of Hindu gods and goddesses…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sudha Rajagopalan, "Journeys of Soviet Things: Cold War as Lived Experience in Cuba and India" (Routledge, 2023)
At the intersection of history, material culture studies, and post-socialist memory studies, Journeys of Soviet Things: Cold War as Lived Experience in Cuba…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Gender and Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh
What does climate change adaptation look like in Bangladesh? And what kind of gendered social landscape does climate change adaptation have to navigate in…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Laurah E. Klepinger, "Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots" (Lexington Books, 2022)
Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots (Lexington Books, 2022) is an ethnography about local wageworkers in the Indian branches of a…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Taylor C. Sherman, "Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths (Princeton UP, 2022) brings a provocative but nuanced set of new interpretations to the history of early independent…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Uddipana Goswami, "Gendering Peace in Violent Peripheries: Marginality, Masculinity, and Feminist Agency" (Routledge, 2022)
Gendering Peace in Violent Peripheries: Marginality, Masculinity, and Feminist Agency (Routledge, 2022) forward Assam (and Northeast India) as a specific…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ching Keng, "Toward a New Image of Paramartha: Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha Buddhism Revisited" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Today I talked to Ching Keng about his book Toward a New Image of Paramartha: Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha Buddhism Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2022). Yogacara and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Adam Michael Auerbach and Tariq Thachil, "Migrants and Machine Politics: How India's Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness" (Princeton UP, 2023)
How poor migrants shape city politics during urbanization As the Global South rapidly urbanizes, millions of people have migrated from the countryside to urban…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Divya Cherian, "Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia" (U California Press, 2022)
Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (U California Press, 2022) explores the question of what it meant to be…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
The Great Goa Land Grab
The small Indian state of Goa has witnessed a veritable land rush over many decades, with shifting state governments, leading politicians, and private…