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
Miss Tibet: Representing Tibet through Beauty Pageants
What does the Miss Tibet beauty pageant tell us about what it means to be Tibetan in a globalized world? And what understandings of Tibetan culture does it…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sanskrit Study: A Conversation with Antonia Ruppel
A candid conversation with renowned Sanskritist and online teacher Antonia Ruppel on her love of the language, teaching philosophy, views on academia, and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Peter Scharf, "Ramopakhyana - the Story of Rama in the Mahabharata" (Routledge, 2023)
Consisting of about 25,000 verses in Valmiki's Rāmāyaṇa, the story of Rāma was summarized in 704 verses in eighteen chapters in the Rāmopākhyāna, which…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tantra: A New Understanding
Professor Gavin Flood of Oxford University discusses new insights on tantra to be released in an upcoming publication stemming from his Continuing Studies…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Matthew Robertson, "Puruṣa: Personhood in Ancient India" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The concept of the puruṣa, or person, is implicated in a wide range of ancient texts throughout the Indian subcontinent. In Puruṣa: Personhood in Ancient…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Translating a Śrī Vidyā Text: The Cidvilāsastava of Amṛtānanda
The Cidvilāsastava is one of the most comprehensive treatments of the esoteric contemplation of ritual found within the Śrīvidyā tradition and Śaiva tantra in…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Patrick Olivelle, "Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King" (Yale UP, 2024)
Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King (Yale UP, 2024) is the first biography of the great Emperor Ashoka relying solely on his own words. Ashoka sought not…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
William S. Waldron, "Making Sense of Mind Only: Why Yogacara Buddhism Matters" (Wisdom Publications, 2023)
Through engaging, contemporary examples, Making Sense of Mind Only: Why Yogacara Buddhism Matters (Wisdom Publications, 2023) reveals the Yogacara school of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Rina Verma Williams, "Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated: Women and Religious Nationalism in Indian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
How has the participation of women in Hindu nationalist politics in India changed over time? More broadly, what has their changing participation meant for…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
India’s Waste Problem: A Discussion with Pamela Das
How is India tackling its persistent wage management problems? And, are new infrastructural solutions the way forward? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Pravina Rodrigues, "A Sakta Method for Comparative Theology: Upside Down, Inside Out" (Lexington, 2023)
Pravina Rodrigues' book A Sakta Method for Comparative Theology: Upside Down, Inside Out (Lexington, 2023) discusses the issue of the missing Hindu…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Michael Ortiz, "Anti-Colonialism and the Crises of Interwar Fascism" (Bloombury, 2023)
What is fascism? Is it an anomaly in the history of modern Europe? Or its culmination? In Anti-Colonialism and the Crises of Interwar Fascism (Bloomsbury…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Across the Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440-1640" (U Texas Press, 2024)
Across the Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440-1640 (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Sanjay Subrahmanyam presents a history of two…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Caste, Music, and Microinequities with Supriya Subramani
In this episode, Pat speaks with Dr Supriya Subramani. Dr Subramani's interest in morality and ethics has led her to explore morality, behaviour, and ethics in…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Radha Kapuria, "Music in Colonial Punjab" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Music in Colonial Punjab (Oxford UP, 2023) offers the first social history of music in undivided Punjab (1800-1947), beginning at the Lahore court of Maharaja…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Shakuntala Gawde, "Narrative Analysis of Bhagavata Purana: Selected Episodes from the Tenth Skandha" (Dev Publishers, 2023)
Shakuntala Gawde's book Narrative Analysis of Bhagavata Purana: Selected Episodes from the Tenth Skandha (Dev Publishers, 2023) presents an analytical study of…
- 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 Ādi Śaṅkara on the Īśā Upaniṣad (Bloomsbury 2024), Stephen Phillips argues that the two titular Vedānta…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ashok Gopal, "A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar" (Navayana Press, 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
The Pioneering Life of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Manu Bhagavan and Ellen Chesler discuss Bhagavan’s latest book on Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (Penguin, 2023), admired sister of India’s founding Prime Minister…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Stephanie Chasin, "British Jews and Imperial Service: Nationalism, Pan-Islamism and Zionism in Mandate Palestine and Colonial India" (I. B. Tauris, 2023)
In the wake of the devastating WWI, three Jews headed the most valuable territory in the British Empire in addition to a strategically important new addition…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Eva De Clercq, ed. and trans., "The Life of Padma" (Harvard UP, 2023)
The Life of Padma, or the Paümacariu, is a richly expressive Jain retelling in the Apabhramsha language of the famous Ramayana tale. It was written by the poet…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
SherAli Tareen, "Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Friendship—particularly interreligious friendship—offers both promise and peril. After the end of Muslim political sovereignty in South Asia, how did Muslim…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Pankaj Jain and Jeffery D. Long, "Indian and Western Philosophical Concepts in Religion" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023)
Philosophical concepts are influential in the theories and methods to study the world religions. Even though the disciplines of anthropology and religious…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, "The Inhumans and Other Stories: A Selection of Bengali Science Fiction" (MIT Press, 2024)
Kalpavigyan—science fiction written to excite Bengali speakers about science, as well as to persuade them to evolve beyond the limitations of religion, caste…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Patrick Olivelle, "Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King" (Yale UP, 2024)
There are few historical figures more integral to South Asian history than Emperor Ashoka, a third-century BCE king who ruled over a larger area of the Indian…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Priyasha Saksena, "Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia (Oxford UP, 2023), Dr Priyasha Saksena interrogates the centuries-old…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Priyanka Basu, "The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia" (Routledge, 2023)
How can culture be authentic in the modern world? In The Poet's Song: Folk and its Cultural Politics in South Asia (Rouitledge, 2023), Dr Priyanka Basu, a…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Razak Khan, "Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions, and Belonging in Princely Rampur" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Razak Khan's Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions, and Belonging in Princely Rampur (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the diversity of the histories and identities of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Baidik Bhattacharya, "Colonialism, World Literature, and the Making of the Modern Culture of Letters" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In a radical and ambitious reconceptualization of the field, Colonialism, World Literature, and the Making of the Modern Culture of Letters (Cambridge UP…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Who owns Khadi?
Why did khadi become so central to India’s freedom struggle? How did it evolve into an international trademark – and what does khadi signify in India today? In…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama, "The Play of the Feminine" (HASP, 2023)
In Tamil Nadu, the nine-night autumnal Navarātri festival can be viewed as a celebration of feminine powers in association with the goddess. Ina Marie Lunde…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Upal Chakrabarti, "Assembling the Local: Political Economy and Agrarian Governance in British India" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
In 1817, in a region of the eastern coast of British India then known as Cuttack, a group of Paiks, the area's landed militia, began agitating against the East…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Christian R. Burset, "An Empire of Laws: Legal Pluralism in British Colonial Policy" (Yale UP, 2023)
In An Empire of Laws: Legal Pluralism in British Colonial Policy (Yale University Press, 2023), Dr. Christian R. Burset presents a compelling reexamination of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Knut A. Jacobsen, "The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Diasporas" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Knut A. Jacobsen's edited volume The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Diaspora (Oxford UP, 2023) presents the histories and religious traditions of Hindus…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Kunal Purohit, "H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars" (HarperCollins, 2023)
Can a song trigger a murder? Can a poem spark a riot? Can a book divide a people? Away from the gaze of mainstream urban media, across India's dusty, sleepy…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Kartik Nair, "Seeing Things: Spectral Materialities of Bombay Horror" (U California Press, 2024)
1980s Bombay was a time when a wave of low-budget, gory horror films made by independent film producers such as the Ramsay Brothers swept the B-movie market…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Yamini Narayanan, "Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India" (Stanford UP, 2023)
India imposes stringent criminal penalties, including life imprisonment in some states, for cow slaughter, based on a Hindu ethic of revering the cow as…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Jeffery D. Long, "Discovering Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu, Jain and Buddhist Thought" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Jeffery D. Long's Indian Philosophy: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2023) helps readers discover how the many and varied schools of Indian thought can answer…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Order and Disorder in South Asia with Christopher Chapple and Debashish Banerji
This episode is dedicated to introducing the South Asian Studies Association (SASA) and their annual academic conference being co-hosted by the Asian…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Jessica Hinchy, "Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c.1850-1900" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Until Jessica Hinchy’s latest book, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c.1850-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), there was no…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Joshua Ehrlich, "The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
The East India Company was a unique entity in world history: More than just a commercial enterprise, the Company tried to act as its own government. Not many…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Francesca Orsini, "East of Delhi: Multilingual Literary Culture and World Literature" (Oxford UP, 2023)
East of Delhi: Multilingual Literary Culture and World Literature (Oxford University Press, 2023) examines literature produced, practiced, and circulated in…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Amanda Lanzillo, "Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India" (U California Press, 2024)
Pious Labour: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India (University of California Press, 2023) focuses on the late nineteenth and early twentieth…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Stephen Harris, "Buddhist Ethics and the Bodhisattva Path: Santideva on Virtue and Well-Being" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Santideva's 8th-century Mahayana Buddhist classic, "The Guide to the Practices of Awakening" (Bodhicaryavatara), has been a source of philosophical inspiration…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
David J. Brick, "Widows Under Hindu Law" (Oxford UP, 2023)
During British colonial rule in India, the treatment of high-caste Hindu widows became the subject of great controversy. Such women were not permitted to…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Amar Sohal, "The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India's Partition" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Concerned with the fate of the minority in the age of the nation-state, Muslim political thought in modern South Asia has often been associated with religious…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Hannah Gould and Gwyn McClelland, "Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats" (Penn State UP, 2023)
A uniquely powerful marker of ethnic, gender, and class identities, scent can also overwhelm previously constructed boundaries and transform social-sensory…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Jan Westerhoff, "Candrakirti's Introduction to the Middle Way: A Guide" (Oxford UP, 2023)
A proponent of the Madhyamaka tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism, Candrakīrti wrote several works, one of which, the Madhamakāvatāra, strongly influenced later…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Ajantha Subramanian on "The Caste of Merit" ((EF,JP))
Before she became the host and star of Violent Majorities, the RTB series on Israeli and Indian ethnonationalism, Ajantha Subramanian sat down with Elizabeth…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Veena R. Howard, "Gandhi's Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Modern Challenges" (Lexington Books, 2022)
While there has been sustained interest in Gandhi's methods and continued academic inquiry, Gandhi's Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Modern Challenges…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Rishad Choudhury, "Hajj Across Empires: Pilgrimage and Political Culture After the Mughals, 1739-1857" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
In Hajj Across Empires: Pilgrimage and Political Culture After the Mughals, 1739-1857 (Cambridge UP, 2023), Rishad Choudhury presents a new history of imperial…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Lindsay Pereira, "The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao" (Vintage Books, 2023)
In December 1992, Hindu nationalists seize the Babri Masjid mosque and tear it down, proclaiming their wish to build a Hindu temple in its stead. The brazen…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Tulasi Srinivas, "Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics" (SUNY Press, 2023)
Tulasi Srinivas' edited volume Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics (SUNY Press, 2023) brings together historians and ethnographers of South…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad, "Beyond Courtrooms and Street Violence: Rethinking Religious Offence and Its Containment" (Routledge, 2022)
Drawing on the extensive empirical field research of six scholars of religion and politics, Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad's Beyond Courtrooms and…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Jayaseelan Raj, "Plantation Crisis: Ruptures of Dalit life in the Indian Tea Belt" (UCL Press, 2022)
What does the collapse of India’s tea industry mean for Dalit workers who have lived, worked and died on the plantations since the colonial era? Plantation…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
120 A Roundup Conversation About Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism
Ajantha Subramanian and Lori Allen turn from hosts to interlocutors in an episode that ties a bow on our Violent Majorities conversations about Indian (episode…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Nilima Chitgopekar, "Shakti: An Exploration of the Divine Feminine" (DK Publishing, 2022)
She is benevolent and nurturing, yet fierce and terrible, a warrior and a lover. She creates and gives life, is death personified, and the one who grants…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Chinmay Tumbe, "The Age Of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They Shaped India and the World" (Harper Collins, 2020)
On this episode of the Economic and Business History channel I spoke with Dr. Chinmay Tumbe, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Benjamin R. Siegel, “Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
In his first book Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India (Cambridge University Press 2018), historian Benjamin Robert Siegel explores…
- New Books in South Asian Studies
Khurram Hussain, "Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
Delighting in Khurram Hussain’s consistently sparkling prose is reason enough to read his new book Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of…