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India's Mithila Painting

By David L. Szanton, Paula Richman

A woman's art form transforms from home to high art

Since at least the fifteenth century, Hindu women in the Mithila region of northern India have been painting images of deities, flora and fauna symbolizing fertility...

Mumbai on Two Wheels

Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility

By Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria

Cyclists from India reimagine transportation infrastructure for all

Mumbai is not commonly seen as a bike-friendly city because of its dense traffic and the absence of bicycle lanes. Yet the city supports rapidly expanding and eclectic...

Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400-1900

By Sumit Guha. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Reveals how imperial power and local resistance have shaped landscapes

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...

The Brush of Insight

Artists and Agency at the Mughal Court

By Yael Rice

Sheds light on the art and artists that gave material form to Mughal imperial vision

Over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Mughal court painters evolved from illustrators of manuscripts and albums to...

Surviving the Sanctuary City

Asylum-Seeking Work in Nepali New York

By Tina Shrestha

On the production of migrant labor and suffering through asylum enforcement

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...

Old Stacks, New Leaves

The Arts of the Book in South Asia

By Sonal Khullar

A deep dive into the visual forms, material contexts, social lives, and global circulations of books

In the twenty-first century, debates on the future of books and print culture have intensified with the rise of digital...

Lahore Cinema

Between Realism and Fable

By Iftikhar Dadi

A pioneering analysis of exemplary feature films

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...

Governing Water in India

Inequality, Reform, and the State

By Leela Fernandes

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...

New Lives in Anand

Building a Muslim Hub in Western India

By Sanderien Verstappen

Investigates how a rural town became a site of community-making, mobility, and identity formation

In 2002 widespread communal violence tore apart towns and villages in rural parts of Gujarat, India. In the aftermath, many Muslims living...

Misreading the Bengal Delta

Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh

By Camelia Dewan. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

An unexpected story of climate change initiatives that threaten a complex waterscape

Perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to floods, erosion, and cyclones, Bangladesh is one of the top recipients of development aid earmarked for...

Mumbai Taximen

Autobiographies and Automobilities in India

By Tarini Bedi

Best Read for the General Public: IBP 2023 Accolades in the Humanities by the International Institute for Asian Studies

2nd Prize Winner of the 2022 Victor Turner Prize sponsored by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology

Brings...

Adivasi Art and Activism

Curation in a Nationalist Age

By Alice Tilche

The uneasy alliance of tribal art and the museum movement

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...

Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India

By Mytheli Sreenivas

Finalist for the inaugural ACLS Open Access Book Prize

Calculating the cost of life in a transnational context

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, India played a pivotal role in global conversations about population and reproduction. In...

Outcaste Bombay

City Making and the Politics of the Poor

By Juned Shaikh

Caste, class, and development converge in a booming metropolis

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...

Opening Kailasanatha

The Temple in Kanchipuram Revealed in Time and Space

By Padma Kaimal

The footsteps and sensory experience of devotees linger in an Indian temple

Stone figures hardened by ascetic discipline and heroic effort face north in deep shadow. There they meet the gazes of the same gods and...

South Asian Filmscapes

Transregional Encounters

By Elora Halim Chowdhury, Esha Niyogi De

New political realities and shared histories connect film cultures across borders

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...

Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian

The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India

By James Staples. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Challenges popular generalizations about cow protection and beef consumption

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...

The Ends of Kinship

Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York

By Sienna R. Craig

What sustains and remakes family and community through migration?

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...

Making Kantha, Making Home

Women at Work in Colonial Bengal

By Pika Ghosh

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...

A Secular Need

Islamic Law and State Governance in Contemporary India

By Jeffrey A. Redding

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...