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
Dan Morrison, "The Poisoner of Bengal: The 1930s Murder That Shocked the World" (Juggernaut, 2024)
It’s the 1930s. Amarendra Chandra Pandey, the youngest son of an Indian prince, is about to board a train when a man bumps into him. Amarendra feels a prick…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Stephen Harris, "Buddhist Ethics and the Bodhisattva Path: Santideva on Virtue and Well-Being" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
An influential eighth-century Buddhist text, Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, or Guide to the Practices of Awakening, how to become a supremely virtuous person, a…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Filmmaker, Artist, Writer: A Conversation with Paromita Vohra
This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Reid B. Locklin, "Hindu Mission, Christian Mission: Soundings in Comparative Theology" (SUNY Press, 2024)
For some four hundred years, Hindus and Christians have been engaged in a public controversy about conversion and missionary proselytization, especially in…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Jonathan Connolly, "Worthy of Freedom: Indenture and Free Labor in the Era of Emancipation" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In Worthy of Freedom: Indenture and Free Labor in the Era of Emancipation (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Jonathan Connolly traces the normalization of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Rory Lindsay, "Saving the Dead: Tibetan Funerary Rituals in the Tradition of the Sarvardurgatipariśodhana Tantra" (WSTB, 2024)
Saving the Dead: Tibetan Funerary Rituals in the Tradition of the Sarvardurgatipariśodhana Tantra (WSTB, 2024) explores Tibetan funerary manuals based on the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Darshana Sreedhar Mini, "Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India" (U California Press, 2024)
In the 1990s, India's mediascape saw the efflorescence of edgy soft-porn films in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. In Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ellen Gough, "Making a Mantra: Tantric Ritual and Renunciation on the Jain Path to Liberation" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
Jainism originated in India and shares some features with Buddhism and Hinduism, but it is a distinct tradition with its own key texts, art, rituals, beliefs…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Neena Mahadev, "Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Around the turn of the millennium, Pentecostal churches began to pepper majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka, setting off a sense of alarm among Buddhists who saw…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Aaron Sherraden, "Śambūka's Death Toll: A History of Motives and Motifs in an Evolving Rāmāyaṇa Narrative" (Anthem Press, 2023)
According to Vālmīki's Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa (early centuries CE), Śambūka was practicing severe acts of austerity to enter heaven. In engaging in these acts as a…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Hindutva and the Muslim Subject
In this episode we celebrate the release of a special issue of the ReOrient journal, ‘Hindutva and the Muslim Subject’, edited by Sheheen Kattiparambil…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Nimmagadda Bhargav, "Stringers and the Journalistic Field: Marginalities and Precarious News Labour in Small-Town India" (Routledge, 2023)
Stringers and the Journalistic Field: Marginalities and Precarious News Labour in Small-Town India (Routledge, 2023) is one of the first ethnographic works on…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Souvik Mukherjee, "Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent: Development, Culture(s) and Representations" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
While there has been considerable research on digital cultures in the Indian Subcontinent, video games have received scant attention so far. Yet, they are…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Swapnil Rai, "Networked Bollywood: How Star Power Globalized Hindi Cinema" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Swapnil Rai’s book Networked Bollywood: How Star Power Globalized Hindi Cinema (Cambridge UP, 2024) brilliantly navigates the intricate landscapes of stardom…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Shyam Ranganathan, "Yoga - Anticolonial Philosophy: An Action-Focused Guide to Practice" (Singing Dragon, 2024)
Providing a decolonial, action-focused account of Yoga philosophy, Yoga - Anticolonial Philosophy: An Action-Focused Guide to Practice (Singing Dragon, 2024)…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ishita Tiwary, "Video Culture in India: The Analog Era" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Ishita Tiwary’s book Video Culture in India: The Analog Era (Oxford UP, 2024) is an unprecedented attempt in foregrounding the diverse media history of the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Reeju Ray, "Placing the Frontier in British North-East India: Law, Custom, and Knowledge" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Placing the Frontier in British North-East India: Law, Custom, and Knowledge (Oxford UP, 2023) is a study of the travels of colonial law into the North-East…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Saqib Khan, "Tribe-Class Linkages: The History and Politics of the Agrarian Movement in Tripura" (Routledge, 2024)
Tribe-Class Linkages: The History and Politics of the Agrarian Movement in Tripura (Routledge, 2023) is a historical study of the development of agrarian class…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow, "A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History: Ten Design Principles" (Duke UP, 2024)
A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History: Ten Design Principles (Duke UP, 2024) is a guide for college and high school educators who are teaching…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Shuchi Kapila, "Postmemory and the Partition of India: Learning to Remember" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)
Shuchi Kapila, Postmemory and the Partition of India: Learning to Remember (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024) Dr. Shuchi Kapila, Professor of English at Grinnell…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Pinky Hota, "The Violence of Recognition: Adivasi Indigeneity and Anti-Dalitness in India" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
The Violence of Recognition: Adivasi Indigeneity and Anti-Dalitness in India (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) offers an unprecedented firsthand account of the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Suganya Anandakichenin, "For My Blemishless Lord: Commentaries on Tiruppāṇāḻvār's Amalaṉ Āti Pirāṉ" (de Gruyter, 2023)
For My Blemishless Lord (de Gruyter, 2023) presents the text and translation of the exquisite poem Amalaṉ Āti Pirāṉ by Tiruppāṇ Āḻvār, which is part of the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, "Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media: History, Practices and Production" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s book Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media: History, Practices and Production (Amsterdam UP, 2023) is an exhaustive attempt to…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Kira Huju, "Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Kira Huju narrates the birth, everyday…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Carl Ernst and Patrick D'Silva, "Breathtaking Revelations: The Science of Breath from 'The Fifty Kamarupa Verses' to Hazrat Inayat Khan" (Suluk Press, 2024)
In Breathtaking Revelations: The Science of Breath from the Fifty Kamarupa Verses to Hazrat Inayat Khan (Suluk Press, 2024), Carl W. Ernst and Patrick J…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Matthew Robertson, "Puruṣa: Personhood in Ancient India" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Personhood is central to the worldview of ancient India. Across voluminous texts and diverse traditions, the subject of the puruṣa, the Sanskrit term for…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Nivedita Menon, "Secularism As Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South" (Duke UP, 2024)
In this episode, we speak to Nivedita Menon about her new book, Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South (Duke University Press…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sudev Sheth, "Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Running and securing an empire can get expensive–especially one known for its opulence, like the Mughal Empire, which conquered much of northern India before…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
The European Association for South Asian Studies
Ute Husken discusses the European Association for South Asian Studies and its upcoming conference in Heidelberg, Germany in October 2025. This conference is…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Andrew McDowell, "Breathless: Tuberculosis, Inequality, and Care in Rural India" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Each year in India more than two million people fall sick with tuberculosis (TB), an infectious, airborne, and potentially deadly lung disease. The country…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Manisha Anantharaman, "Recycling Class: The Contradictions of Inclusion in Urban Sustainability" (MIT Press, 2024)
What types of coalitions can deliver social justice within sustainability initiatives? And how can we avoid reproducing unjust distributions of risk and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Marcus Schmücker, "Visnu-Narayana: Changing Forms and the Becoming of a Deity in Indian Religious Traditions" (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2023)
The contributions to Visnu-Narayana: Changing Forms and the Becoming of a Deity in Indian Religious Traditions (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2023) deal…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Amrita Ghosh, "Kashmir's Necropolis: Literary, Cultural, and Visual Texts" (Lexington Books, 2023)
Amrita Ghosh's book Kashmir's Necropolis: Literary, Cultural, and Visual Texts (Lexington Books, 2023) is an interdisciplinary book that studies literary…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sohini Pillai, "Krishna's Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Between 800 and 1700 CE, a plethora of Mahabharatas were created in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Aakriti Mandhwani, "Everyday Reading: Middlebrow Magazines and Book Publishing in Post-Independence India" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)
Everyday Reading: Middlebrow Magazines and Book Publishing in Post-Independence India (U Massachusetts Press, 2024) is a timely book on the history of print…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Lamia Karim, "Castoffs of Capital: Work and Love among Garment Workers in Bangladesh" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
Castoffs of Capital: Work and Love among Garment Workers in Bangladesh (U Minnesota Press, 2022) examines how female garment workers experience their work and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Stephen Phillips, "The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Adi-Sakara on the Isa Upanisad" (Bloombury, 2024)
In The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Adi-Sakara on the Isa Upanisad (Bloombury, 2024), Stephen Phillips focuses on one of the most important…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Timothy P. A. Cooper, "Moral Atmospheres: Islam and Media in a Pakistani Marketplace" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Lahore's Hall Road is the largest electronics market in Pakistan. Once the center of film and media piracy in South Asia, it now specializes in smartphones and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Anjali Arondekar, "Abundance: Sexuality’s History" (Duke UP, 2023)
In Abundance: Sexuality’s History (Duke UP, 2023), Anjali Arondekar refuses the historical common sense that archival loss is foundational to a subaltern…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Robert Lyman, "A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma, and Britain: 1941–45" (Osprey, 2021)
In 1941 and 1942 the British and Indian Armies were brutally defeated and Japan reigned supreme in its newly conquered territories throughout Asia. But change…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Priya Satia, "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one dominated by…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Rajrishi Singhal, "Slip, Stitch and Stumble: The Untold Story of Financial Reforms in India" (Viking, 2024)
India’s stock markets are booming. One calculation from Bloomberg puts India as the world’s fourth-largest equity market, overtaking Hong Kong, as domestic and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Raghuram G. Rajan and Rohit Lamba, "Breaking the Mold: India’s Untraveled Path to Prosperity" (Princeton UP, 2024)
The whole world has a stake in India's future, and that future hinges on whether India can develop its economy and deliver for its population--now the world's…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ketaki Chowkhani, "The Limits of Sexuality Education: Love, Sex, and Adolescent Masculinities in Urban India" (Routledge, 2024)
The Limits of Sexuality Education: Love, Sex, and Adolescent Masculinities in Urban India (Routledge, 2024) explores different strands of thinking about…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Karen Pechilis et al. ed., "Devotional Visualities: Seeing Bhakti in Indic Material Cultures" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Devotional Visualities: Seeing Bhakti in Indic Material Cultures (Bloomsbury, 2023) is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Hemjyoti Medhi, "Gendered Publics: Chandraprava Saikiani and the Mahila Samiti in Colonial Assam" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Gendered Publics: Chandraprava Saikiani and the Mahila Samiti in Colonial Assam (Oxford UP, 2024) is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive appraisal of the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sreeparna Chattopadhyay, "The Gravity of Hope" (Crossed Arrows, 2023)
Sreeparna Chattopadhyay's book The Gravity of Hope (Crossed Arrows, 2023) is a non-fictional account of women’s lives who sometimes endured, often resisted and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Richard M. Jaffe, "Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
Though fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Fauzia Husain, "The Stigma Matrix: Gender, Globalization, and the Agency of Pakistan's Frontline Women" (Stanford UP, 2024)
As developing states adopt neoliberal policies, more and more working-class women find themselves pulled into the public sphere. They are pressed into wage…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Nancy M. Martin, "Mirabai: The Making of a Saint" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Mirabai, an iconic sixteenth-century Indian poet-saint, is renowned for her unwavering love of God, her disregard for social hierarchies and gendered notions…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil, "The Gulf Migrant Archives in Kerala: Reading Borders and Belonging" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Indian state of Kerala is one of the largest blocs of migrants in the oil economies of the Arab Gulf. Looking closely at the cultural archives produced by…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Kenneth R. Valpey, "Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
What does cow care in India have to offer modern Western discourse animal ethics? Why are cows treated with such reverence in the Indian context? Join us as we…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Jason Birch, "The Amaraugha and Amaraughaprabodha of Goraksanatha" (Institut Francais de Pondichery, 2024)
The Lineage of Immortals (Sanskrit Amaraugha) is the earliest account of a fourfold system of yoga in which a physical practice called Haṭha is taught as the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tarana Husain Khan et al., "Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia" (Pan Macmillan, 2023)
Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia (Pan Macmillan India, 2023) is a collection of essays and recipes that highlights the complex and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
India Votes 2024
What is at stake at the 2024 Indian national elections? And, what can we expect if the incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi wins another five years in…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Mukund Padmanabhan, "The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked over a Japanese Non-invasion (Vintage Books, 2024)
In April 1942, at least half a million people fled the city of Madras, now known as Chennai. The reason? The British, after weeks of growing unease about the…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Purushottama Bilimoria et al., "Contemplative Studies and Jainism: Meditation, Prayer, and Veneration" (Routledge, 2023)
Contemplative Studies and Jainism: Meditation, Prayer, and Veneration (Routledge, 2023) is one of the first wide-ranging academic surveys of the major types…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sudev Sheth, "Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In this colorful book, historian Sudev Sheth traces how a family of diamond dealers deployed wealth to play off political leaders and survive the collapse of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Arsalan Khan, "The Promise of Piety: Islam and the Politics of Moral Order in Pakistan" (Cornell UP, 2024)
The Promise of Piety: Islam and the Politics of Moral Order in Pakistan (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Arsalan Khan is an incisive ethnographic study of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, "The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: The Complete English Translation" (Princeton UP, 2022)
The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki, the monumental Sanskrit epic of the life of Rama, ideal man and incarnation of the great god Visnu, has profoundly affected the…