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
Matthew Bowser, "Containing Decolonization: British Imperialism and the Politics of Race in Late Colonial Burma" (Manchester UP, 2025)
In Containing Decolonization: British Imperialism and the Politics of Race in Late Colonial Burma (Manchester University Press, 2025), historian Matthew Bowser…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ruth Perini, "Varaha Upanishad: The Path to Supreme Knowledge" (2025)
This conversation examines the newly published translation of the Varāha Upaniṣad, a lesser-known but deeply transformative scripture from the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History" (U California Press, 2025)
David McNally's Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (U California Press, 2025)presents the first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Robert Ivermee, "Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India" (Oxford UP, 2025)
This is a powerful new account of a chapter in history that is crucial to understand, yet often overlooked. For 150 years, from the reign of Louis XIV to the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Laura Murphy, "Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt" (Columbia Global Reports, 2021)
A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it? Millions of people around the world today are enslaved…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Maan Barua, "Plantation Worlds" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Plantation Worlds (Duke UP, 2024), Maan Barua interrogates debates on planetary transformations through the histories and ecologies of plantations. Drawing…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
A Ukrainian Translation of the Devi Mahatmya
In this episode, Dr. Raj Balkaran speaks with art historian and curator Alisa Lozhkina about her groundbreaking Ukrainian translation of the Devī Māhātmya—the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Faisal Chaudhry, "South Asia, the British Empire, and the Rise of Classical Legal Thought: Toward a Historical Ontology of the Law" (Oxford UP, 2024)
South Asia, the British Empire, and the Rise of Classical Legal Thought: Toward a Historical Ontology of the Law (Oxford UP, 2024) considers the legal history…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Robert Cribb et al., "Detention Camps in Asia: The Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History" (Brill, 2022)
Why have Asian states - colonial and independent - imprisoned people on a massive scale in detention camps? How have detainees experienced the long months and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Vinay Lal, "Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in Post-Truth Times" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The anthology presents a diverse array of essays delving into Gandhi's political activities, ethical beliefs, and philosophical stance. Distinguished Gandhian…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Uzma Quraishi, "Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War" (UNC Press, 2020)
In Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press), Uzma Quraishi (Sam…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)
A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace (U California Press, 2025) is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position in the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent" (Princeton UP, 2025)
I’m Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors writing in…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Vinay Lal, "India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Navijivan Rastogi, "Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta: The Epistemological Ethics of a Tantric Tradition" (Nalanda, 2022)
The Krama School of the Trika Saivism of Kashmir, more familiar as Kalikrama in the contemporary parlance, has turned out to be the most crucial among the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
“Truth is a Pathless Land”: Krishnamurti and Revolutionary Spirituality with Connie Jones
In this episode, “Truth is a Pathless Land,” we speak with Transformative Inquiry Program faculty member Connie Jones to explore the micropolitical stakes of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties Across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena, 1200-1550" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries new kingdoms emerged in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. Sovereignty in these new kingdoms was expressed…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Suruchi Mazumdar, "Divided Media: Politics and Mediated Movements in India" (Routledge, 2025)
Suruchi Mazumdar’s book addresses the complex relationship between India’s evolving, emerging media landscape, the political and economic interests of diverse…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Joanna Jurewicz, "Invisible Fire: Memory, Tradition and the Self in Early Hindu Philosophy" (2021)
Invisible Fire by Joanna Jurewicz explores early Hindu philosophy through the Manusmṛti, Bhagavadgītā, and Mokṣadharma, showing that reality is a single…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ankur Barua, "The Hindu Self and Its Muslim Neighbors: Contested Borderlines on Bengali Landscapes" (Lexington, 2022)
In The Hindu Self and its Muslim Neighbors, the author sketches the contours of relations between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal. The central argument is that…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Jessica Ratcliff, "Monopolizing Knowledge: The East India Company and Britain's Second Scientific Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2025))
In the book Monopolizing Knowledge: The East India Company and Britain’s Second Scientific Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2025), author Jessica Ratcliff traces the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2020), helps…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Christopher T. Fleming, "Equity and Trusts in Sanskrit Jurisprudence" (British Academy, 2025)
This monograph outlines the core principles of equity and trusts in Sanskrit jurisprudence (Dharmaśāstra) and traces their application in the practical legal…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Much of world history is Indian history. Home today to one in four people, the subcontinent has long been densely populated and deeply connected to Asia…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tina Chen and Charlotte Eubanks, "Global Asias: Tactics & Theories" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Global Asias: Tactics & Theories is the inaugural volume in an exciting new series that explores critical concerns animating Global Asias scholarship. It…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through character…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (HarperCollins UK, 2025)
As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – were bound…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Amogh Dhar Sharma, "The Backstage of Democracy: India's Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
About the Book Over the last decade, election campaigns in India have undergone a dramatic shift. Political parties increasingly rely on political consulting…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Thiago P. Barbosa, "Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970)" (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970) (De Gruyter, 2025) analyzes how racial knowledge has…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Wendy Doniger, "An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963-64" (SUNY Press, 2023)
Wendy Doniger’s An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963–64 (SUNY Press, 2023) is a memoir-style collection of letters and reflections from…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
NIAS Podcast from the University of Tartu Asia Centre Kashmir Crisis: The India-Pakistan Blame Game?
This podcast episode, hosted by Kikee Doma Bhutia from the University of Tartu, features Nitasha Kaul, Professor of Politics, International Relations, and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Eva De Clercq, Heleen De Jonckheere, and Simon Winant eds., "Literary Transcreation as a Jain Practice" (Ergon-Verlag, 2025)
A vast corpus of Jain texts lies unexamined in manuscript libraries, several of them new versions of earlier works. Though the prevalence of literary…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Abdul Wohab, "Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence" (Routledge, 2025)
Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence (Routledge, 2025) comprehensively analyses the syncretistic form of Bengali Islam and its…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Gazi Mizanur Rahman, "In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Gazi Mizanur Rahman’s In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community (Cambridge University Press, 2024) offers the first sustained…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Lines of Control: India’s Foreign Policy and China
This podcast episode, hosted by Kikee Doma Bhutia from the University of Tartu, features journalist and analyst Aadil Brar discussing India's foreign policy…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Mayukh Sen, "Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star" (Norton, 2025)
In 2022, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. But she wasn’t the first actress of Asian origin to be…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Pāṇḍitya: Mapping Sanskrit Texts Online
Tyler Neill discusses the new platform Pāṇḍitya, an online graph visualization tool illustrating connections between works and authors in the Pandit…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Catherine Hartmann, "Making the Invisible Real: Practice of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Dr. Catherine Hartmann is Assistant Professor of Asian Religions in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at University of Wyoming. She received…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Andrew Ollett, "The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō): A Prakrit Work of Poetics" (UniorPress, 2025)
The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō) defines and exemplifies 42 figures of speech or “ornaments” in 134 verses. It is the only surviving work of poetics…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tupur Chatterjee, "Projecting Desire: Media Architectures and Moviegoing in Urban India" (NYU Press, 2025)
Since the late 1990s, the multiplex in India has emerged as a dominant site of media exhibition, almost always embedded within the shopping mall. This spatial…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Subho Basu, "Intimation of Revolution: Global Sixties and the Making of Bangladesh" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Intimation of Revolution: Global Sixties and the Making of Bangladesh (Cambridge UP, 2023) analyzes the growth of Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan during…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette, "Metaphysics As Therapy: List-Making and Renunciation in Gnostic Yogas" (Springer, 2025)
Metaphysics As Therapy: List-Making and Renunciation in Gnostic Yogas (Springer, 2025) examines the significance of metaphysical list-making as a determining…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tithi Bhattacharya, "Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal (Duke UP, 2024), Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali ghosts and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Shailendra Kumar Singh, "Between Resistance and Conformity: Premchand’s Fiction in Colonial North India" (Routledge, 2024)
Shailendra Kumar Singh’s Between Resistance and Conformity: Premchand’s Fiction in Colonial North India (Routledge, 2024) examines the questions of conformity…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Christopher Harding, "The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East" (Allen Lane, 2024)
Christopher Harding’s The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024) is a fascinating survey of two millennia of Western…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Welcome to the Global Corporations Special Series on the Law Channel on the New Books Network. This Special Series is dedicated to interviews with scholars…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Paul M. McGarr, "Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War (Cambridge UP, 2024) is the first comprehensive history of India's secret Cold…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Political Mythmaking in Nepal
How and why do local political processes in rural Nepal become an arena for political mythmaking? And, how do political myths obscure their own historical…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
John Nemec, "Brahmins and Kings: Royal Counsel in the Sanskrit Narrative Literatures" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Brahmins and Kings: Royal Counsel in the Sanskrit Narrative Literatures (Oxford UP, 2025) examines some of the most well-known and widely circulated narratives…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sarah Saddler, "Performing Corporate Bodies: Multinational Theatre in Global India" (Routledge, 2025)
How do corporations use theater to reconcile the crises of late capitalism? In our latest interview on Ethnographic Marginalia, we speak with Dr. Sarah Saddler…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Titas Chakraborty, "Empire of Labor: How the East India Company Colonized Hired Work" (U California Press, 2025)
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Christopher Key Chapple, "The SāṃKhya System: Accounting for the Real" (SUNY Press, 2024)
The SāṃKhya System: Accounting for the Real (SUNY Press, 2024) brings new life to an ancient Hindu system of thought. Sāṃkhya spans the fields of philosophy…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
William Dalrymple, "The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Philip Harling, "Managing Mobility: The British Imperial State and Global Migration, 1840-1860" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Between 1840 and 1860 the British Empire expanded rapidly in scale, with rampant annexation of territory and ruthless suppression of rebellion. These decades…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Hemangini Gupta, "Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India" (U California Press, 2024)
Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India (U California Press, 2024) is an in-depth ethnography of the transformation of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Rhys Machold, "Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements Across India and Palestine/Israel" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Homeland security is rarely just a matter of the homeland; it involves the circulation and multiplication of policing practices across borders. Though the term…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Vidyan Ravinthiran, "Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir" (Icon Books, 2025)
Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir was published in January 2025 by Icon Books. The book considers the political and psychological dimensions…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Azmeary Ferdoush, "Sovereign Atonement: Citizenship, Territory, and the State at the Bangladesh-India Border" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
The former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India existed as extra-territorial spaces since 1947. They were finally exchanged and merged as host state…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Kiyokazu Okita, "The Building of Vṛndāvana: Architecture, Theology, and Practice in an Early Modern Pilgrimage Town" (Brill, 2023)
The small town of Vṛndāvana is today one of the most vibrant places of pilgrimage in northern India. Throngs of pilgrims travel there each year to honour the…