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The Greater Second World War: Global Perspectives

Andrew N. Buchanan and Ruth Lawlor (editors)

The Greater Second World War challenges the traditional temporal and geographic frameworks of World War II, expanding the timeline to include a series of regional conflicts and revolutions that began in 1931 and continued into the mid-1950s.

These conflicts bookended a “central paroxysm” defined by the intervention of the United States into every theater of the war, rendering it genuinely global. The essays within this volume bring top-level accounts of US, European, and Axis strategic maneuvering into conversation with social histories of “bottom-up” agency in ways that destabilize conventional narratives.

Working with novel and overlapping scales of time and space and attuned to ongoing and lively debates about the place of the nation-state in global history after 1945, the scholars featured in The Greater Second World War seek to not only describe the war’s beginnings in Asia and Africa—rather than in Europe—but also trace its ends to the shatter zones of the Soviet frontier, the struggles for sovereignty in contested spaces, and the long-reaches of US imperialism well into the late twentieth century. Together, their contributions reveal how the cascading imperial and economic crises of the mid-twentieth century triggered a series of discrete local and regional struggles that took on the character of a singular, unified “world war” after the entry of the United States into every theater and almost every corner of the world.

City of Lyrics: Ordinary Poets and Islamicate Popular Culture in Early Modern Delhi

Nathan L. M. Tabor

Chronicling the origins of a global poetry phenomenon.

For centuries, Urdu-speaking poets and their audiences have gathered for mushāʿirahs, literary competitions for spoken-word verse. Today the mushāʿirah is a global phenomenon, as audiences in the millions convene in person and online for hours of poetic performance. Tracing these modern gatherings back to their origins, Nathan L. M. Tabor introduces readers to the popular emergence of the mushāʿirah in eighteenth-century Delhi. Scores of poets composed two-line lyric poems, called ġhazals, that they muttered, sang, shouted, and spat out in contentious salon spaces across India’s largest metropolis. Delhi’s mushāʿirahs circulated lyrics, satires, and songs for both common and elite poets, who traded and assessed words as an urban commodity that defined hierarchy, taste, and notions of delight.

Via poets’ verse exchanges and their histories of Delhi’s literary scene, City of Lyrics reconstructs the social networks the mushāʿirahs produced. By understanding the roots of this uniquely Islamic literary practice, readers will gain insight into global popular culture today, which increasingly takes shape according to the tastes and values of the Muslim world yet is enjoyed by wide audiences of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Machiavelli on War

Christopher Lynch

Machiavelli on War offers a comprehensive interpretation of the philosopher-historian’s treatment of war throughout his writings, from poems and memoranda drafted while he was Florence’s top official for military matters to his posthumous works, The Prince and Discourses on Livy.

Christopher Lynch argues that the issue of war permeates the form and content of each of Machiavelli’s works, the substance of his thoughts, and his own activity as a writer, concluding that he was the first great modern philosopher because he was the first modern philosopher of war.

Lynch details Machiavelli’s understanding of warfare in terms of both actual armed conflict and at the intellectual level of thinkers competing on the field of knowledge and belief. Throughout Machiavelli’s works, he focuses on how military commanders’ knowledge of human necessities, beginning with their own, enables and requires them to mold soldiers, organizationally and politically, to best deploy them in operations attuned to political context and changing circumstances. Intellectually, leaders must shape minds, their own and others’, to reject beliefs that would weaken their purpose; for Machiavelli, this meant overcoming the classical and Christian traditions in favor of a new teaching of human freedom and excellence.

As Machiavelli on War makes clear, prevailing both on the battlefield and in the war of ideas demands a single-minded engagement in “reasoning about everything,” beginning with oneself. For Machiavelli, Lynch shows, the successful military commander is not just an excellent leader but also an excellent human being in constant pursuit of the truth about themselves and the world.

The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature and History after Empire

Sam Goodman

Explores the 20th century literary revival of Empire and the post-imperial novel through a critical medical humanities lens.

• Offers new insights into an established genre of twentieth-century literature through the application of a critical medical humanities lens.
• Adds to scholarly understanding of the perceived legacy of Empire in culture and society of the twentieth century through comparative analysis of a selection of well-known Booker Prize winning novelists.
• Offers a balance of close reading of key novels in addition to critical approaches to history, historiography and context to explore the representation of Britishness and identity after Empire.
• Explores the relationship between illness, nationhood, and culture/history, so of acute contextual relevance.

The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature & History after Empire undertakes a detailed analysis of the use of medicine as a recurrent and defining trope of post-imperial fiction published between 1950 and 1990. The book argues that during this crucial period of recent history, when the influence and prestige of the British Empire was nearing its end, a range of contemporary novelists including J. G. Farrell, Paul Scott, John Masters, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Salman Rushdie identified and used medicine as a discursive paradigm through which to engage critically with the history, authority and legacy of the British Empire within their writing. Drawing on a range of literary and archival sources, this work explores the complex relationship between Britain, India and Empire through a medical lens, bringing together the concerns of literary study and medical history under an interdisciplinary and original methodological framework.

Myth and History in Ancient Persia: The Achaemenids in the Iranian Tradition

Reza Shaghaghi Zarghamee

Traces ancient Iranian mythical-legendary traditions within classical sources on Median and Persian royalty.

• Combines leading research in different interdisciplinary areas, including classics, Iranology, oral traditions, comparative mythology, and religious studies (focusing on Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and other Old Iranian religions).
• Expands on previous scholarship and utilizes overlooked Iranian evidence.
• Provocatively rereads the accounts of key events in Median and Achaemenid history, including passages that are of tremendous interest outside the field of Iranian studies.
• Overturns longstanding perceptions regarding the methods and overall reliability of classical authors.
• Presents findings that may serve as a foundation to future narrative works on Achaemenid history, as well as to the concept of cultural production in the Achaemenid period.

This book fills an important gap in Achaemenid studies by using traditional Iranian narratives, such as those found in the famous Shahnameh, or ‘Book of Kings’, of Ferdowsi, to analyse the Greco-Roman accounts of Median and Persian royalty. The study shows that the classical authors derived their accounts from Iranian traditions, grounded in age-old myths and legends. This analysis serves many purposes. It refines the extent to which the classical sources may be used in historical reconstructions and sheds new light on the literary methods of authors, such as Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon. Finally, the book offers insights into one of the thorniest enigmas in Iranian historiography, the apparent disappearance of Illustrious rulers like Cyrus II, Darius I, and Xerxes I from native historical traditions. Standing at the crossroads of Iranian studies and Classics, this book is an indispensable source for scholars of ancient Iran, Greek historiography, and the Shahnameh.

Behind Kṛṣṇa’s Smile: The Lord’s Hint of Laughter in the Bhagavadgītā and Beyond

Antonio Rigopoulos and Gianni Pellegrini

Examines Kṛṣṇa’s hint of laughter (prahasann iva) in the Bhagavadgītā, its interpretations in the Vedānta commentarial tradition, and its significance in Kṛṣṇaite iconography and literature.

Behind Kṛṣṇa’s Smile offers a wholly original perspective on the celebrated Bhagavadgītā, or “Song of God.” The book investigates Kṛṣṇa’s hint of laughter (prahasann iva) in Bhagavadgītā 2.10, which is generally understood to be the turning point of the famous poem, signaling the outpouring of his grace and teaching to Arjuna. Remarkably, it is from this verse that Śaṅkara and other leading theologians begin to write their commentaries. In addition to exploring the momentousness of Kṛṣṇa’s hint of laughter and its impact on the poem’s central teachings, Behind Kṛṣṇa’s Smile provides a crucial interpretation of Kṛṣṇa’s prahasann iva in the Vedānta commentarial tradition, from Śaṅkara up to modern times. The book also considers the meanings of the stock phrase prahasann iva in the larger epic framework of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa. Moreover, the book offers the first comprehensive review of the significance of Kṛṣṇa’s smile in Kṛṣṇaite iconography and literature, demonstrating that there is a unified canon bringing together the literary and performative dimensions of Kṛṣṇa’s hint of laughter.

The Ethnography of Tantra: Textures and Contexts of Living Tantric Traditions

Carola E. Lorea and Rohit Singh (editors)

Presents Tantra from an ethnographic vantage point, through a series of case studies grounded in diverse settings across contemporary Asia.

This is the first collection of essays to approach the topic of Tantric Studies from the vantage point of ethnography and lived religion, moving beyond the centrality of written texts and giving voice to the everyday life and livelihoods of a multitude of Tantric actors. Bringing together a team of international scholars whose contributions range across diverse communities and traditions in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan region, the book connects distant shores of Tantric scholarship and lived Tantric practices. The contributors unpack Tantra’s relationship to the body, ritual performance, sexuality, secrecy, power hierarchies, death, magic, and healing, while doing so with vigilant sensitivity to decolonization and the ethics of fieldwork. Through diverse ethnographies of Tantra and attention to lived experiences and life stories, the book challenges normative definitions of Tantra and maps the variety of Tantric traditions, providing comparative perspectives on Tantric societies across regions and religious backgrounds. The accessible tone of the ethnographic case studies makes this an ideal book for undergraduate or graduate audiences working on the topic of Tantra.

Sufism and Power in the Ottoman Empire: The Writings of Ismail Hakki Bursevi (1653–1725)

Kameliya N. Atanasova

Delves into the writings of a prolific mystic to argue that Ottoman Sufism was political.

• Introduces one of the most prolific Ottoman authors of all time to Western audiences.
• Highlights the important connections between Sufism (Islamic mysticism) and political power.
• Sheds light on the contested nature of religious authority in the early-modern Ottoman state.
• Examines previously unpublished and untranslated Arabic and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts.
• Uses methods and theories from the fields of Religious Studies, Ottoman History, and Islamic Studies.

This book contributes to the growing scholarship on the political dimensions of Ottoman Sufi thought and practice by examining the intersections of self-representation and religious authority in the writings of Ismail Hakki Bursevi (1653–1725), a prolific Sufi master, well-known Qur’an exegete, and advisor to Ottoman officials. The book highlights the political aspirations of this prominent early-modern Sufi through a focus on Bursevi’s self-portraits as one of the most important religious figures of his age. By paying attention to the individual, communal, and institutional aspects of his authority construction, the book sheds light on how intellectuals like Bursevi navigated an increasingly competitive market of religious ideas in the Ottoman late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. More broadly, Sufism and Power in the Ottoman Empire challenges the notion that Sufi authority is necessarily charismatic and argues that the social context in which Bursevi lived points to alternative theorizations of religious authority as a discourse.

Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics

Tulasi Srinivas (editor)

A comparative study of wonder in South Asian religions.

The experience of wonder—encompassing awe, bewilderment, curiosity, excitement, fear, dread, mystery, perplexity, reverence, surprise, and supplication—and the ineffable quality of that which is wondrous have been entwined in religion and human experience. Yet strangely, wonder in non-western societies, including South Asia, has rarely been acknowledged or understood. This groundbreaking volume brings together historians and ethnographers of South Asia, including leading and emerging scholars, to consider the place and meaning of wonder in such varied joyful, tense, and creative sites and moments as Sufi music performances in Gujarat, Tamil graveyard processions, trans women’s charitable practices, Kipling’s Orientalist tales, village Kuchipudi dance performances, and Rajasthani healing shrines. Offering a synthetic and scholarly reading of wonder that speaks to the political, aesthetic, and ethical worlds of South Asia, these essays redefine the nature and meaning of wonder and its worlds. Taken together, they provide an invaluable research tool for those in the fields of Asian religion, religion in context, and South Asian religions in particular.

The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya

Steven E. Lindquist

A literary and historical investigation into an ancient Indian religious thinker, tracing his rise in importance in the Hindu tradition.

In this fascinating study, Steven E. Lindquist investigates the intersections between historical context and literary production in the “life” of Yājñavalkya, the most important ancient Indian literary figure prior to the Buddha. Known for his sharp tongue and deep thought, Yājñavalkya is associated with a number of “firsts” in Indian religious literary history: the first person to discuss brahman and ātman thoroughly; the first to put forth a theory of karma and reincarnation; the first to renounce his household life; and the first to dispute with women in religious debate. Throughout early Indian history, he was seen as a priestly bearer of ritual authority, a sage of mystical knowledge, and an innovative propagator of philosophical ideas and religious law. Drawing on history, literary studies, ritual studies, Sanskrit philology, narrative studies, and philosophy, Lindquist traces Yājñavalkya’s literary life—from his earliest mentions in ritual texts, through his developing biography in the Upaniṣads, and finally to his role as a hoary sage in narrative literature—offering the first detailed monograph on this central figure in early Indian religious and literary history.

Migrant Epistemologies in Indian Nonfiction of the Long Twentieth Century

Manisha Basu

Showcases how a range of migrant experiences are crucial to increasing interdependencies between differentially empowered groups across the world.

• Theorizes the contact between distinct epistemologies during the migrant experience as crucial for a politics of living in relation to others.
• Animates the figure of the nonfiction writer as a public intellectual with an interest in the viability of different worldviews.
• Generates a conversation between the new Global South Studies and an older vein of critical humanism from both India and the West.
• Traces the interest of contemporary nonfiction in the kinds of stories that emerge in the histories-from-below rubric of Subaltern Studies.
• Connects the figure of the migrant to the important task of rendering durable endangered ways of knowing through an epistemologies-from-below approach.

Attending to non-fiction texts from India and the Global South, Migrant Epistemologies identifies migratory contact zones as sites on which contrary epistemic stances may co-exist, despite their differences, in a symbiotic ecology. Given the increasing traffic between differentially empowered groups around the world, their distinct cognitive practices must often meet one another head-on. Manisha Basu argues that in the best of such circumstances, migrants and hosts open themselves to unlearning their own dominant worldviews and animating other ways of knowing. Unlike accounts of migration that accentuate the violences involved in the movements of peoples, this book foregrounds relatively peaceable, but still complex, migratory encounters that imagine an epistemologically diverse world resulting in social and environmental justice.