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.
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1201
Sujatha Gidla, “Ants among Elephants: An Untouc...
In her searing book Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), Sujatha Gidla traces her family’s history over four generations in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
38 min
1202
Hugh Urban, “Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spiritualit...
Many contemporary spiritual movements are characterized by denial of material pleasures, subjugation of the self, and focus on transcendence. A spiritual program that cultivates embodied satisfaction is often seen as inauthentic and fraudulent.
42 min
1203
Jane McCabe, “Race, Tea and Colonial Resettleme...
In her new book, Race, Tea and Colonial Resettlement: Imperial Families, Interrupted (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Jane McCabe, Lecturer in the Department of History and Art History at the University of Otago, explores the tale of the “Kalimpong Kids,
16 min
1204
Michael J. Altman, “Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: Ame...
Scholars regularly assert that at Chicago’s World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893 Swami Vivekananda initiated Hinduism in America. Many histories of Hinduism in America reproduce this type of synthesizing narrative.
53 min
1205
Mengia Hong Tschalaer, “Muslim Women’s Quest fo...
In her inspiring new book, Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mengia Hong Tschalaer charts the strivings and creative struggles of Muslim women’s organizations in contemporary North I...
28 min
1206
Rahuldeep Singh Gill, “Drinking From Love’s Cup...
There is a long tradition of the study of Sikhism in Western academia. However, historiographical accounts still lack a clear vision of the early formation of the tradition. Rahuldeep Singh Gill, Associate Professor of Religion at California Lutheran U...
46 min
1207
Manan Ahmed Asif, “A Book of Conquest: The Chac...
In contemporary South Asia, the question of Muslim origins emerges in school textbooks, political dialogues, or at tourist or pilgrimage cites. The repeated narrative revolves around the foreign Muslim leader, Muhammad bin Qasim,
58 min
1208
Kief Hillsbery, “Empire Made: My Search for an ...
Kief Hillsbery‘s Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) follows the career of Nigel Halleck, an English tax assessor in employ of the British East India Company and his travels on the ...
60 min
1209
Michael Youngblood, “Cultivating Community: Int...
Cultivating Community: Interest, Identity, and Ambiguity in an Indian Social Mobilization by Michael Youngblood, a cultural anthropologist based in San Francisco, was published in November, 2016 by the South Asian Studies Association Press.
35 min
1210
William Elison, et.al. “Amar Akbar Anthony: Bol...
Amar Akbar Anthony is a film like no other. When you see it you cannot forget it. Filled with music, comedy, drama, and love it captures audiences in multiple ways. But what can we learn from a deeper look at this classic of Hindi cinema?
71 min
1211
Rajan Gurukkal, “Rethinking Classical Indo-Roma...
Rajan Gurukkal‘s Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations (Oxford University Press, 2016) casts a critical eye over the exchanges, usually and problematically termed trade,
35 min
1212
Audrey Truschke, “Culture of Encounters: Sanskr...
Contemporary scholarship on the Mughal empire has generally ignored the role Sanskrit played in imperial political and literary projects. However, in Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia University Press, 2016),
49 min
1213
Ronojoy Sen, “Nation at Play: A History of Spor...
Covering sporting activities from ancient times right up to the modern day, Ronojoy Sen’s Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India (Columbia University Press, 2016) is at once broad in its scope, yet detailed in its analysis of key events.
27 min
1214
Benjamin Schonthal, “Buddhism, Politics and the...
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lank...
70 min
1215
Anastasia Piliavsky, ed., “Patronage as Politic...
Does patronage always imply a corruption of democratic political processes? Across sixteen essays by historians, political scientists and anthropologists Patronage as Politics in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2014),
38 min
1216
Projit Bihari Mukharji, “Doctoring Traditions: ...
Projit Bihari Mukharji’s new book explores the power of small, non-spectacular, and everyday technologies as motors or catalysts of change in the history of science and medicine. Focusing on practices of Ayurveda in British Bengal between about 1870-19...
64 min
1217
“Best New Books in Political Science 2016: Inte...
Last week featured a year-end-round up of books in American politics. This week I looked back to the past year on the podcast in other subfields. I start with an interview I enjoyed with Prerna Singh. Her book examines sub-nationalism in India.
11 min
1218
Carol Upadhya, “Reengineering India: Work, Capi...
How is India’s burgeoning IT industry reshaping the country? What types of capital is IT attracting and what formations does it take? How are software engineers managed? What are their goals and aspirations?
39 min
1219
Rupa Viswanath, “The Pariah Problem: Caste, Rel...
The so called “Pariah Problem” emerged in public consciousness in the 1890s in India as state officials, missionaries and “upper”caste landlords, among others, struggled to understood the situation of Dalits (those subordinated populations once called ...
33 min
1220
Roman Sieler, “Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Med...
Roman Sieler’s
Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India (Oxford University Press, 2015) is a fine-grained ethnographic study of varmakkalai–the art of vital spots, a South Indian practice that encompasses both martial and...
75 min
1221
Arie L. Molendijk, “Friedrich Max Muller and th...
Arie L. Molendijk is Professor of the History of Christianity and Philosophy in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has written Friedrich Max Muller and the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford ...
50 min
1222
Harini Nagendra, “Nature in the City: Bengaluru...
In Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2016), Harini Nagendra traces centuries of interaction between ecology and urban change, revealing not only the destructive tendencies of urbanization,
40 min
1223
Liam Brockey, “The Visitor: Andre Palmeiro and ...
The transmission of a religion closely connected to a particular culture into a very different religious and cultural environment is a difficult act of translation in which a balance must be struck between remaining true to doctrine while understanding...
75 min
1224
Prerna Singh, “How Solidarity Works for Welfare...
Prerna Singh has written How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Singh is the Mahatma Gandhi Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Brown Univer...
27 min
1225
Simanti Dasgupta, “BITS of Belonging: Informati...
What links a water privatization scheme and a prominent software company in India’s silicon city, Bangalore? Simanti Dasgupta’s new book, BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India (Temple University Press,
44 min