We are pleased to share an excerpt from the introduction of Modern Indian History, by Emily Rook-Koepsel, the latest addition to the Key Issues in Asian Studies series of classroom texts. This concise volume begins in the 16th century and carries readers through to the present day, covering the subcontinent’s major political, economic, and social […]
“Decolonization” is an academic, high-level word for a political process that has had consequences in the lives of millions of people. Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia following World War II involved the withdrawal of colonial administrations and the establishment of new nation-states in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaya, and elsewhere. This, however, was not […]
“Many scholars, colleagues, and friends told me that Indian Buddhism was dead,” Douglas Ober notes, “so I had better seek out a different subject.” Undeterred, Ober continued working on his dissertation project on the history of Indian Buddhism, which in 2023 he published in revised form as Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism […]
In workshops and industrial spaces across North India, artisans practiced their trades: tailoring and carpentry, lithography, stonemasonry, and electroplating. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these skilled workers adapted to new tools and technologies, saw transmission of knowledge move from family workshops to technical schools, and dealt with the expanding presence of the […]
In this interview, AAS Membership Manager Bill Warner speaks with historian Dr. Sudev Sheth, Senior Lecturer at the Lauder Institute at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, about his recent book Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The book focuses on the Jhaveri family in the western […]
Shailaja Paik is Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Asian Studies at the University of Cincinnati and author of The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford University Press), winner of the 2024 AAS Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize. On the afternoon […]
In March 2024, we look forward to welcoming Tanika Sarkar as the AAS 2024 Annual Conference keynote speaker. With support from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Dr. Sarkar will join us in Seattle for her talk, “Between State and Faith: Colonial Personal Laws and the Triumph of Indian Cultural Nationalism,” on Thursday, March 14 at 5:00pm at […]
Benjamin Hopkins is a professor of history and international affairs at the George Washington University and author of Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State, published by Harvard University Press and winner of the 2022 AAS Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize. To begin with, please tell us what your book […]
Durba Mitra is Associate Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University and author of Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought, published by Princeton University Press and winner of the 2022 AAS Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize. To begin with, please tell us what your book […]
Rashmi Sadana is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University. She is an anthropologist and works primarily in India. Why did you join AAS and why would you recommend AAS to your colleagues? It’s great to be connected to a place-based community of scholars, especially as many of us are based far from our […]
May 28, 2021Issued by the AAS Board of Directors AAS expresses grave concern at the recent announcement regarding the demolition of the Annex of the National Archives in Delhi. We urge the Government of India to disclose its plans for safely transferring held documents and artifacts, their intermediate and long-term storage, and their availability to […]
Michael O’Sullivan is a Junior Research Fellow in the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University and author of “Vernacular Capitalism and Intellectual History in a Gujarati Account of China, 1860–68,” which appears in the May 2021 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies. O’Sullivan’s article discusses a travelogue published in 1868 by Damodar […]
Durba Mitra, assistant professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, is author of “‘Surplus Woman’: Female Sexuality and the Concept of Endogamy” published in the February 2021 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies. Mitra’s first book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality […]
The AAS has signed on to the statement below, issued by the American Historical Association on February 5, 2021, that opposes a new policy issued by India’s Ministry of Higher Education/Department of Higher Education “that ‘requires Indian scholars and administrators to obtain prior approval from the Ministry of External Affairs if they want to convene […]
This is Number 7 in the “JAS Author Interviews” series at #AsiaNow. Click here to see all posts in the series. The August 2020 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies includes “‘Modernization’ and Agrarian Development in India, 1912–52,” a research article by historian Prakash Kumar (Pennsylvania State University). Drawing from his current book project, in this […]
Kishor K. Podh is a Ph.D. Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has been a member of the Association for Asian Studies since 2019. What is your discipline and country (or countries) of interest? I received academic training in Sociology. My area of interest […]
Aparna Vaidik is Associate Professor of History at Ashoka University, India and author of My Son’s Inheritance: A Secret History of Lynching and Blood Justice in India (Aleph, 2020). In the essay below, Vaidik discusses the book’s origins and the questions she seeks to address, as well as her decision to write it for a […]
Dr. Sally Sutherland Goldman is Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit and Dr. Robert Goldman is William and Catherine Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Sanskrit at the University of California at Berkeley. They are the authors of The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, Volume VII: Uttarakāṇḍa, published by Princeton University Press (2017) and winners of […]
This is Number 5 in the “JAS Author Interviews” series at #AsiaNow. Click here to see all posts in the series. Elizabeth Chatterjee is Lecturer in Regional and Comparative Politics at Queen Mary University of London. Chatterjee’s article, “The Asian Anthropocene: Electricity and Fossil Developmentalism,” appears in the February 2020 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies. […]
By Weijia Vicky Shen, University of Pittsburgh On November 8, 2019, I attended the “Rethinking India’s Eighteenth Century” workshop at the University of Pittsburgh. The day-long gathering began with me sitting uncomfortably at a round table in the Humanities Center, surrounded by established scholars of South Asia. My anxiety stemmed in part from being the […]
