New Books in South Asian Studies
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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...
Recent Episodes
1366 episodes
Vignesh Rajahmani, "The Dravidian Pathway: The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Politics of Transition in South India" (Hurst Publishers, 2025)
In
the rich political landscape of Tamil Nadu, few movements have had as
profound and enduring an impact as the Dravidian movement. Vign...
Pratap Kumar Penumala and Arvind Sharma, "The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hindu Ethics" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
With the plurality of Hinduism in mind, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hindu Ethics focuses on the human, sociological and situational ethical framework u...
Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, "Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) asks
how a (world) com...
Meena Khandelwal, "Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women's Technology in India" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Stove
improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient”
biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frust...
Gajendran Ayyathurai, "Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores
Tamil Buddhism in modern...
Aditi Chandra, "Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture (Cambridge University Press, 2025) examines
how Delhi's Sultanate and Mu...
Caste and Music with T.M. Krishna
This episode features a conversation with Carnatic vocalist, T.M. Krishna, who is also the author of two books on this musical tradition. We began wit...
Christian Environmentalism in a Hindu Majoritarian Context
Why has the Catholic Church in India become so engaged in environmental initiatives? And what does the wider Indian political context defined by an as...
Hamsa Stainton and Anna Lee White, "Sanskrit Hymns Across Traditions: Studying Stotras" (Routledge, 2026)
Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotra/stuti/stava) have been popular and influential within multiple religious traditions for thousands of years. Sanskrit...
Carola E. Lorea, "Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal" (Wesleyan UP, 2026)
Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal (Wesleyan University Press, 2026) brings
together insights from r...
Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, "Surrender to God Across Languages: Multilingual Intellectual History of Premodern India" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Surrender to God Across Languages: Multilingual Intellectual History of Premodern India (Oxford UP, 2026) explores the role of languages in the intell...
Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment.
Drawing on sound studies and...
The Diasporic Hindu Right with Savera
This episode features a conversation with Prachi and Ram, organizers with Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans...
Ashok Malhotra, "Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969" (UCL Press, 2026)
Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969 (UCL Press, 2026) is a global history project that examines the diffusion...
Bruno Shirley, "Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215" (ARC Humanities Press, 2026)
Dr. Shirley's monograph, Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215 (ARC Humanities...
Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh trans., "Baidehisha Bilasa: The Amorous Plays of Sita’s Husband" (Wide Open Window Books, 2025)
Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh bring into English for the first time a long-inaccessible masterpiece of South Asian literature Baidehisha Bilasa: T...
Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)
Around 2016, buoyed by so-called data kranti ("data revolution"), an aspirational neo-middle class of users in India accessed internet for the first...
India’s 2026 State Elections and Indian Democracy?
This week on Democracy Dialogues, Maya Tudor speaks with two keen observers of Indian politics, Gilles Verniers and Yamini Aiyar, about what India’s...
Patrick S. D. McCartney, "Sanskrit-Speaking' Villages, Linguistic Utopias and the Metaphysics of Development" (Routledge, 2026)
Sanskrit-Speaking' Villages, Linguistic Utopias and the Metaphysics of Development (Routledge, 2026) is a recollection of the McCartney's journey acro...
Shefalee Vasudev, "Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and the Politics of Appearance" (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025)
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, is known for his outfits. Since rising to become India’s head of government in 2014, photographers and journali...
Kanika Singh, "The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture, published
by Cambridge University Press in July 2025, is a pioneering study on...
Dalit Feminism with Thenmozhi Soundararajan
This episode features a conversation with Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder Equality Labs and author of The Trauma of Caste. We discussed her own comin...
Erica Bornstein, "A Revolution of Rules: The Regulatory Reform of India's Nonprofit Sector" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Erica Bornstein, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon (and Divisional Associate Dean), has a new book that delves into the regulatory...
Shyam Ranganathan, "Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)
Why have moral philosophers largely ignored colonialism? In Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression (Bloomsbury Academic...
Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal (Oxford UP, 2024) by Sumana Roy takes an unexpected cast of writers and artists and, in studying their work...
Nayantara Srinivasan, "The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore in Contemporary India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore in Contemporary India (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores the landscape of anglophone trade bookselling in India, aiming to i...
T. V. Paul, "The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi" (Oxford UP, 2024)
From a Distinguished International Relations Scholar comes The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi (Oxford UP,...
Kenneth G. Zysk, "South Asian Animal Divination: A Critical Anthology" (Brill, 2025)
South Asian Animal Divination: A Critical Anthology (Brill, 2025) examines the history and practice of animal omen divination in South Asia, comparing...
Caste and the City with Malini Ranganathan and Juned Shaikh
This episode features a conversation with urban geographer, Malini Ranganathan, and historian, Juned Shaikh, on the centrality of caste to urbanizatio...
Sumita Mukherjee, "Imperial Footprints: A History of South Asian Child Migrants in Britain" (Hurst, 2026)
Between 1857 and 1947, over 28 million Indians left the subcontinent to live, work and study elsewhere. Today, India has the largest diaspora in the w...
Vindhya Buthpitiya, "A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka" (U Washington Press, 2026)
A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Vindhya Buthpitiya is a groundbreaking et...
Caste and Race: Ambedkar and King with the Ambedkar King Study Circle
This episode features S. Karthikeyan and S. Subbulakshmi, the Convenor and Secretary of the Ambedkar King Study Circle, an anti-caste organization bas...
The MANTRAMS Project: Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia
Carola Lorea discusses the MANTRAMS project, a major ERC Synergy Grant initiative jointly hosted by Oxford, Vienna, and Tübingen dedicated to producin...
Shameem Black, "Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism...
Gautamiputra Kamble, "The Seekers" (Blaft Publication, 2025)
The seekers in these stories travel through worlds both ancient and modern, worlds of symbol and fantastical allegory, on their paths to greater truth...
Gudrun Bühnemann, "Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions" (Brill, 2025)
Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions (Brill, 2025) illuminates the many faces of Patañjali in Indian...
Transnational Solidarities with Nico Slate
My conversation with Nico Slate began with him reflecting on his own path into the study of historical connections between South Asia and the United S...
Tim Connor et al., "Global Business and Local Struggle: Reimagining Non-Judicial Remedy for Human Rights" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In the quest for human rights justice for communities and workers whose rights are breached by transnational businesses, non-judicial mechanisms (NJMs...
Radio ReOrient 14.2: State of the Ummah: Authoritarianism and Resistance: Bangladesh and Pakistan, Hosted by SherAli Tahreen and Shehla Khan, with Tanzeen Doha and Salman Sayyid
In this episode of Radio ReOrient’ s occasional series The State of the Ummah, SherAli Tahreen, Shehla Khan, Tanzeen Doha, and Salman Sayyid unpack th...
Asif Iqbal, "Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature: Cultural Imaginings of a Postcolonial Nation" (Routledge, 2025)
Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature: Cultural Imaginings of a Postcolonial Nation (Routledge, 2025) illuminates individual and collecti...