Sanctum Studies in Indian Intellectual, Cultural, and Historical Traditions is a developing series of concise and analytically serious works engaging major questions in Indian intellectual history, philosophy, religion, literature, archaeology, architecture, political thought, historical geography, material culture, social life, and the formation of cultural and historical worlds across South Asia and adjacent regions.
The series seeks to create a space for reflective and conceptually grounded scholarship in a shorter and more focused form. Rather than broad surveys or narrowly specialized monographs, the volumes are conceived as sustained interpretive interventions drawing on the depth of a scholar’s existing work while opening larger historical and civilizational questions for reflection.
The series is especially interested in works combining conceptual rigor with historical, philological, ethnographic, archaeological, literary, architectural, or interpretive depth.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Indian philosophy and intellectual history
• Sanskritic, Persianate, vernacular, and multilingual traditions
• Religion, ritual, and devotional worlds
• Literary cultures and aesthetics
• Architecture, archaeology, and historical landscapes
• Political thought and social formations
• Caste, identity, and democratic modernity
• Material culture and spatial history
• Trade, mobility, and connected regional worlds
• Translation, commentary, and hermeneutics
• Historical geography and cultural memory
• Cross-cultural exchange and frontier zones
• Performance, embodiment, and affect
• Ecology, environment, and sacred geography
The series is intended for scholars, students, and intellectually engaged readers across disciplines.
Most volumes are envisaged at approximately 35,000–45,000 words.
The broader aim of the series is to cultivate durable works capable of contributing simultaneously to scholarship, criticism, and wider conversations concerning the historical and conceptual study of South Asia.
A number of projects are presently at different stages of discussion, development, and formation.