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
1317 episodesMargherita Trento et al., "For the Love of Tamil: Essays in Honor of E. Annamalai" (UnionPress, 2025)
For the Love of Tamil celebrates the life and work of E. Annamalai (born 1938), the most prominent Tamil linguist of his generation. Spanning six deca...
Daneesh Majid, "The Hyderabadis: From 1947 to the Present Day" (Harper Collins, 2025)
From the annexation of the princely state of Hyderabad in September 1948 to the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 and the eventual creation of Telan...
David N. Gellner and Krishna P. Adhikari, "Nepal's Dalits in Transition" (Vajra Books, 2024)
What do political democracy and social hierarchy do to each other?
For too long Nepal's Dalits have been marginalized, not just socially,...
Mattie Armstrong-Price, "Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways" (U California Press, 2026)
Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Mattie Armstrong-Pric...
Drama of Democracy: Political Representation in Mumbai
How do the inhabitants of the Indian city of Mumbai navigate political signs and representations? What is the significance of crowds and mass mobiliza...
Hillary Rodrigues, "The Supreme Refuge: Durgā's Transformation Into the Hindu Great Goddess" (SUNY Press, 2025)
The Supreme Refuge: Durgā's Transformation Into the Hindu Great Goddess (SUNY Press, 2025) provides the first comprehensive examination of the Hindu...
Coming Out as Dalit with Yashica Dutt
This episode features Yashica Dutt, journalist and author of Coming Out as Dalit. We began with a discussion of her choice to write a memoir, the sign...
Syona Puliady, et al., "Visualizing Devotion: Jain Embroidered Shrine Hangings" (U Washington Press, 2025)
Textiles, embroidered with religious imagery, express lay piety in public and private shrinesThis beautifully illustrated volume highlights Jain devot...
Warwick Ball, "Ancient Civilizations of Afghanistan: From the Earliest Times to the Mongol Conquest" (Reaktion, 2025)
Today, Afghanistan–if it ever reaches global headlines–is portrayed as an unstable land, known more for the wars great powers fight (and often lose) o...
Renny Thomas and Sasanka Perera, "Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes (Columbia UP, 2025) presents a set of keywords and concepts embedded in the languages of South...
Jason Cons, "Delta Futures: Time, Territory, and Capture on a Climate Frontier" (U California Press, 2025)
A free e-book version of Delta Futures is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to...
Aidan Seale-Feldman, "The Work of Disaster: Crisis and Care Along a Himalayan Fault Line" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
The Work of Disaster: Crisis and Care Along a Himalayan Fault Line (U Chicago Press, 2025) is a compelling portrait of post-disaster imaginaries of re...
Ananya Vajpeyi, "Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities" (Women Unlimited Ink, 2025)
'In the five years that I tacked incessantly between Delhi, Venice and Istanbul, two questions plagued me: How do we lose what we lose? Why do we love...
Mark D. Steinberg, "Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Using public storytelling as a driving force, Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Mod...
Neilesh Bose, "Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India (Cambridge University Press, 2025) explores the development and natu...
Lisa Björkman, "Drama of Democracy: Political Representation in Mumbai" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
In Drama of Democracy: Political Representation in Mumbai (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Lisa Björkman invites our attention to political form and how the...
Feminism and Critical Hindu Studies with Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurt, and Shana Sippy
This episode features a conversation with the founding members of the Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective, also known as the Auntylectuals. We...
India’s Democratic Republic in Flux
In this episode of Democracy Dialogues, co-host Maya Tudor speaks with Yogendra Yadav – political thinker, activist, and one of India’s most prominent...
Sugata Bose, "Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century" (Harvard UP, 2024)
The balance of global power changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century, above all with the economic and political rise of Asia. Asia...
Susan Banki, "The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan's Homeland Activists" (Cornell UP, 2024)
The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan's Homeland Activists (Cornell UP, 2024), relays the events in Bhutan th...
Eric Chopra, "Ghosted" (Speaking Tiger, 2026)
Delhi is haunted—by its ghosts, its ruins, and its unending capacity for rebirth. In the shadow of medieval mosques and Mughal tombs, the past refuses...
The Caste Question with Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao
TCP’s inaugural episode features Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao, two scholars whose academic work and activism have helped to set the parameters of the...
Swapna Kona Nayudu, "The Nehru Years: An International History of Indian Non-Alignment" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Scholars of international relations, political thought, and India's international and diplomatic history are increasingly interested in the relevance...
Alaina M. Morgan, "Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora" (UNC Press, 2025)
Alaina Morgan's Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora (UNC Press, 2025) introduces the concep...
Bradley R. Simpson, "The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The idea of self-determination is one of the most significant in modern international politics. For more than a century diplomats, lawyers, scholars,...
Stephen Legg, "Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities" (U Georgia Press, 2025)
Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (U Georgia Press, 2025) is the first book-length account of anticolonialism in Delhi, as th...
Namit Arora and Romila Thapar, "Speaking of History: Conversations about India’s Past and Present" (India Allen Lane, 2025)
What does it mean to be a historian? How do you try to explain the past when sources are lacking? And how do we talk about history when it’s so politi...
Ishita Dey, "Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal" (Routledge, 2025)
Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal (Routledge, 2025) by Ishita Dey is an ethnographic work on excess. Based on a decade-long fieldwork of a singl...
Kellen Hoxworth, "Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance" (Northwestern UP, 2024)
In Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance (Northwestern UP, 2024) Dr. Kellen Hoxworth presents a sweeping history of racialized performance...
Madhuri Deshmukh, "The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi" (Columbia UP, 2025)
In this interview we discuss The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi (Columbia UP, 2025). Women’s song...
Leah Lowthorp, "Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India" (Indiana UP, 2025)
Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India explores the extraordinary past and present of Kutiyatt...
Christopher Jain Miller and Cogen Bohanec, "Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Studies of Jain Social Engagement" (SUNY Press, 2026)
The Jain tradition, with roots in ancient India but now spread across the globe, is anything but static and monolithic. In Engaged Jainism, an interdi...
Nile Green, "Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri Lanka in the Islamic Indian Ocean" (U Texas Press, 2026)
Sri Lanka has long sat astride the monsoon winds between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea – a small island at the centre of a very big story. For...
Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, "Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-first Century India" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Screening Precarity integrates a cultural analysis of film texts and history, industry transformations, and the violence and crises of political econo...
Deana Heath and Jinee Lokaneeta, "Policing and Violence in India: Colonial Origins and Contemporary Realities" (Speaking Tiger, 2025)
Why does Indias police force, created under British rule, still echo the priorities of a bygone empire? And what is it about this institution, tasked...
Baijayanti Roy, "The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism (2024) is the first detailed and critical study of the intellectual and political connections that...
Gil Ben-Herut, "Stories of Shiva's Saints: Selections from Harihara's Ragales" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The Kannada language boasts an ongoing literary tradition spanning more than a millennium, with a rich array of social positions and roles, religious...
J. Barton Scott, "Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Why is religion today so often associated with giving and taking offense? To answer this question, Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious...
Alastair McClure, "Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857-1922" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857-1922 (Cambridge UP, 2024) offers the first legal history...
Tracy Pintchman ed., "Engaging Hindu Narratives and Practices in the Contemporary World" (2025)
"Engaging Hindu Narratives and Practices in the Contemporary World"Special Issue of the International Journal of Hindu Studies: Volume 29, Issue 2 (Au...