Washington University Press Search Results Page
Showing results 1-20 of 62

Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400-1900
The perception, valuation, and manipulation of human environments all have their own layered histories. So Sumit Guha argues in this sweeping examination of a pivotal five hundred years when successive empires struggled to harness lands...
ISBN: 9780295751498
more detailsThe Brush of Insight
Artists and Agency at the Mughal Court
Over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Mughal court painters evolved from illustrators of manuscripts and albums to active mediators of imperial visionary experience, cultivating their patrons’ earthly and spiritual authority. Featuring...
ISBN: 9780295751092
more detailsOld Stacks, New Leaves
The Arts of the Book in South Asia
In the twenty-first century, debates on the future of books and print culture have intensified with the rise of digital technologies, and the contemporary art world has witnessed an explosion of interest in the book...
ISBN: 9780295751115
more detailsSurviving the Sanctuary City
Asylum-Seeking Work in Nepali New York
Over the past several decades, the vibrant, multiethnic borough of Queens has seen growth in the community of Nepali migrants, many of whom are navigating the challenging bureaucratic process of asylum legalization. Surviving the Sanctuary...
ISBN: 9780295751528
more detailsLahore Cinema
Between Realism and Fable
Commercial cinema has been among the most powerful vectors of social and aesthetic modernization in South Asia. So argues Iftikhar Dadi in his provocative examination of cinema produced between 1956 and 1969—the long sixties—in Lahore,...
ISBN: 9780295750811
more detailsGoverning Water in India
Inequality, Reform, and the State
Intensifying droughts and competing pressures on water resources foreground water scarcity as an urgent concern of the global climate change crisis. In India, individual, industrial, and agricultural water demands exacerbate inequities of access and expose...
ISBN: 9780295750439
more detailsNew Lives in Anand
Building a Muslim Hub in Western India
In 2002 widespread communal violence tore apart towns and villages in rural parts of Gujarat, India. In the aftermath, many Muslims living in Hindu-majority villages sought safety in the small town of Anand. Following such...
ISBN: 9780295749648
more detailsMisreading the Bengal Delta
Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh
Perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to floods, erosion, and cyclones, Bangladesh is one of the top recipients of development aid earmarked for climate change adaptation. Yet to what extent do adaptation projects address...
ISBN: 9780295749617
more detailsMumbai Taximen
Autobiographies and Automobilities in India
In this first book-length study of Mumbai’s taxi industry and of the livelihoods that surround it, Tarini Bedi draws from the lives and voices of chillia taxi drivers who have sustained a hereditary trade for...
ISBN: 9780295749860
more detailsAdivasi Art and Activism
Curation in a Nationalist Age
As India consolidates an aggressive model of economic development, indigenous tribal people known as adivasis continue to be overrepresented among the country’s poor. Adivasis make up more than eight hundred communities in India, with a...
ISBN: 9780295749716
more detailsReproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, India played a pivotal role in global conversations about population and reproduction. In Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India, Mytheli Sreenivas demonstrates how colonial administrators, postcolonial development...
ISBN: 9780295748849
more detailsOutcaste Bombay
City Making and the Politics of the Poor
Over the course of the twentieth century, Bombay’s population grew twentyfold as the city became increasingly industrialized and cosmopolitan. Yet beneath a veneer of modernity, old prejudices endured, including the treatment of the Dalits. Even...
ISBN: 9780295748504
more detailsOpening Kailasanatha
The Temple in Kanchipuram Revealed in Time and Space
Stone figures hardened by ascetic discipline and heroic effort face north in deep shadow. There they meet the gazes of the same gods and goddesses but with gentler bodies enacting grace, warmth, seduction, and marriage,...
ISBN: 9780295747774
more detailsSouth Asian Filmscapes
Transregional Encounters
In South Asia massive anticolonial movements in the twentieth century created nation-states and reset national borders, forming the basis for emerging film cultures. Following the upheaval of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947...
ISBN: 9780295747859
more detailsSacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian
The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India
Bovine politics exposes fault lines within contemporary Indian society, where eating beef is simultaneously a violation of sacred taboos, an expression of marginalized identities, and a route to cosmopolitan sophistication. The recent rise of Hindu...
ISBN: 9780295747880
more detailsThe Ends of Kinship
Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York
For centuries, people from Mustang, Nepal, have relied on agriculture, pastoralism, and trade as a way of life. Seasonal migrations to South Asian cities for trade as well as temporary wage labor abroad have shaped...
ISBN: 9780295747699
more detailsMaking Kantha, Making Home
Women at Work in Colonial Bengal
In Bengal, mothers swaddle their infants and cover their beds in colorful textiles that are passed down through generations. They create these kantha from layers of soft, recycled fabric strengthened with running stitches and use...
ISBN: 9780295746999
more detailsA Secular Need
Islamic Law and State Governance in Contemporary India
Whether from the perspective of Islamic law’s advocates, secularism’s partisans, or communities caught in their crossfire, many people see the relationship between Islamic law and secularism as antagonistic and increasingly discordant. In the United States...
ISBN: 9780295747088
more detailsGandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet
Eating with the World in Mind
Mahatma Gandhi redefined nutrition as fundamental to building a more just world. What he chose to eat was intimately tied to his beliefs, and his key values of nonviolence, religious tolerance, and rural sustainability developed...
ISBN: 9780295744964
more detailsThe Snow Leopard and the Goat
Politics of Conservation in the Western Himalayas
Following the downgrading of the snow leopard’s status from “endangered” to “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2017, debate has renewed about the actual number of snow leopards in the wild...
ISBN: 9780295746579
more details