Episodes

  • Uzma Quraishi, "Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War" (UNC Press, 2020)

    Uzma Quraishi, "Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War" (UNC Press, 2020)
    Aug 20 2025
    In Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press), Uzma Quraishi (Sam Houston State University) follows the Cold War-era journeys of South Asian international students from U.S. Information Service reading rooms in India and Pakistan, to the halls of the University of Houston, to the suburban subdivisions of Alief and Sugar Land. This student migration between 1960 and 1980 shows how public diplomacy programs overseas catalyzed the arrival of highly educated, middle-class Asians in the U.S. before the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. Drawing on archival documents, GIS data, and oral interviews, Quraishi investigates how Indian and Pakistani immigrants forged an “interethnic” identity in Houston and located themselves—both socially and geographically—in the midst of a booming yet segregated Sunbelt city. She conceptualizes their mobility as “brown flight,” a process that simultaneously strengthened ethnic bonds even as it reinforced racial and class barriers. By exploring the links between international and local scales, Redefining the Immigrant South will interest scholars from many fields, including Asian American history; histories of the U.S. South, immigration, and U.S. foreign relations; and sub/urban studies. Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)

    Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)
    Aug 16 2025
    A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace (U California Press, 2025) is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position in the Indian Ocean. Here the reign of Oman’s longest-serving ruler, Saʿid bin Sultan, offers a keyhole through which we can peer to see the entangled histories of Arabia and the Gulf, South Asia, and East Africa in the Omani Empire. In centering this empire, Nicholas P. Roberts shows how Arabs, Africans, and Asians actively shaped the conditions of commercial engagement in the Western Indian Ocean, uniting the empire’s domains into a single oceanic marketplace in which Europeans and Americans had to accede if they wished to succeed. Drawing upon sources in three languages from four continents, A Sea of Wealth is a vivid narrative full of colorful characters that upturns many conventional understandings of our modern world. Nicholas P. Roberts was formerly Assistant Professor of History at Norwich University and the Howell Fellow for Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies at the University of Virginia. He is currently earning a JD at Case Western Reserve University. Ahmed Yaqouob AlMaazmi is an Assistant Professor of History at the United Arab Emirates University, with interests in the intersections of empire, science, slavery, law, environmental infrastructures, and material culture in the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Indian Ocean world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
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    53 mins
  • Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent" (Princeton UP, 2025)

    Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent" (Princeton UP, 2025)
    Aug 14 2025
    I’m Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors writing in, around, and about the Asia-Pacific region. How do you tell the story of India–not just the modern-day country, but the whole region of South Asia, home to over two billion people? Historian Audrey Truschke’s newest book, India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent (Princeton UP, 2025), starts at the very beginning: the rise of the Indus Valley Civilization, of which we still know frustratingly little. Her book covers millennia of history–the Vedas, Ashoka, the rise of Buddhism and Islam, the Mughals, the Marathas, the Company, and then newly independent India. Audrey Truschke is Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Her research focuses on the cultural, imperial, and intellectual history of medieval and early modern India as well as the politics of history in modern times. She is the author of four books. London-based business and culture journalist Prarthana Prakash joins me on the show today as a guest host. Find her on Linkedin. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
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    44 mins
  • Vinay Lal, "India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Vinay Lal, "India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Aug 14 2025
    The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science discourse, decolonize the dominant knowledge frameworks, and understand how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indian civilization may be deployed to think both, about some problems in contemporary politics and culture, and to introduce greater plurality into the world of modern knowledge systems. Some of the collective's members remain deeply committed to reinitiating metaphysics into politics, and similarly, the collective's enduring interest in Narayana Guru is reflected in at least three chapters. Although engagement with Gandhi and Ambedkar is a familiar part of the Indian intellectual landscape, other chapters on offer pivot around histories of power, performative traditions, and modes of worship. Unlike the scholarship that is now the norm, organized around a distinct theme, this volume exhibits a more daring approach to India's intellectual traditions, traversing the world of Kannada intellectuals, the Kashmir Shaiva tradition, a Marathi Bhakti poet, and a contemporary Indian philosopher, as much as conceptual ideas drawn from a wide array of Indian texts and experiences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
    Aug 11 2025
    On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is joining me to talk about her new book, Cave of my Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora published by Chicago University Press in 2024, and in 2025 as an Indian edition by HarperCollins India. As a young girl in Bombay, Kirin Narayan was enthralled by her father’s stories about how their ancestors had made the ancient rock-cut cave temples at Ellora. Recalling those stories as an adult, she was inspired to learn more about the caves, especially the Buddhist worship hall known as the “Vishwakarma cave.” Immersing herself in family history, oral traditions, and works by archaeologists, art historians, scholars of Buddhism, Indologists, and Sanskritists, in Cave of my Ancestors Narayan set out to answer the question of how this cave came to be venerated as the home of Vishwakarma, the god of making in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Part scholarship, part detective story, and memoir, Narayan’s book leads readers through centuries of history, offering a sensitive meditation on devotion, wonder, and all that connects us to place, family, the past, and the divine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Navijivan Rastogi, "Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta: The Epistemological Ethics of a Tantric Tradition" (Nalanda, 2022)

    Navijivan Rastogi, "Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta: The Epistemological Ethics of a Tantric Tradition" (Nalanda, 2022)
    Aug 7 2025
    The Krama School of the Trika Saivism of Kashmir, more familiar as Kalikrama in the contemporary parlance, has turned out to be the most crucial among the monistic Saiva traditions of medieval Kashmir after the Pratyabhijna school, a scenario people could hardly envisage six decades back when it first came to the notice of modern scholarship. The doctrine of Kalikrama, lit. sequential order of consciousness deities called Kalis, constitutes the most pivotal aspect of this school marked by a synchronous resonance between the esoteric/Tantric and cognitive/metaphysical undercurrents of the system. In order to delve deeper into the doctrine of Kalikrama the present monograph does some loud thinking in three important areas: (a) the role of cognitivization in the ultimate realization; (b) the theoretical background of the mystical experience built around the consciousness deity(ies); and (c) the inconclusiveness of the hidden meaning posing an epistemological barrier in the study of an esoteric Tantric tradition. In all these areas one cannot miss the imprints of Abhinavagupta’s profound contribution. As such, the present study journeys into three directions: (1) a short genealogy of modern Krama studies; (2) the epistemology of the esoteric internalization embodied in the doctrine of Kalikrama; and (3) the role played by Abhinavagupta as its foremost architect. As such, the present study needs be construed as a small step towards discovering the intrinsic epistemological ethos of an esoteric Tantric tradition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
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    28 mins
  • “Truth is a Pathless Land”: Krishnamurti and Revolutionary Spirituality with Connie Jones

    “Truth is a Pathless Land”: Krishnamurti and Revolutionary Spirituality with Connie Jones
    Aug 5 2025
    In this episode, “Truth is a Pathless Land,” we speak with Transformative Inquiry Program faculty member Connie Jones to explore the micropolitical stakes of revolutionary spirituality through Krishnamurti’s challenge to religious prescription, psychological conditioning, and egoic identification. We discuss techniqueless meditation, the primacy of awareness over truth, and the distinction between perception and cognition as a path beyond the representational mind. Our conversation engages the unknown as the ground of creativity and examines how culturally conditioned individualism is challenged by non-dual insights. We also explore Bohmian Dialogue as a transformative practice aligned with Krishnamurti’s vision—an open, non-hierarchical mode of collective inquiry that suspends judgment and cultivates shared attention. Through this lens, we consider how his praxis opens onto a micro-political awareness capable of generating new forms of being and transformation beyond all systems of conditioning. Connie Jones, Ph.D., is a sociologist of religion who joined CIIS in 1994, having taught at several colleges and theology schools. Beginning with her doctoral dissertation on the caste system in India, she has pursued a long interest in the cultures and religions of the East, including the adoption of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and practices in the West. She researches spiritual teachers as well as the evolution of new religious movements around the world. Throughout her career in higher education, she has helped establish women’s studies departments and curricula in several colleges and has published research on women’s status in India and feminist methods. She has been a member of a multidisciplinary team of scholars that investigates new religious movements around the world and has published articles on movements that are based on Eastern religious belief and practice. At present, Constance has a book, Krishnamurti: Self-Inquiry, Awakening, and Transformation, in press with Cambridge University Press. In this volume she outlines the life and teaching of the enigmatic 20th century philosopher and teacher J. Krishnamurti. She serves in scholarly positions with the Gurdjieff Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man (2017- present) Tbilisi, Georgia and the Publications Committee of the Krishnamurti Foundation of America (2018-present), Ojai, California. Books: Encyclopedia of Hinduism Contemplative Literature The EWP Podcast credits • Connect with EWP: Youtube • Facebook • Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD grad) • Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay • Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay • Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala • Music at the end of the episode: Tundra Immanence (blowing meditation) • Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
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    1 hr and 41 mins
  • Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties Across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena, 1200-1550" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

    Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties Across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena, 1200-1550" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
    Aug 1 2025
    From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries new kingdoms emerged in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. Sovereignty in these new kingdoms was expressed in terms we understand today as coming from ‘Theravada Buddhism’. Crucial to this tradition was the Pali language. Anne Blackburn’s new book, Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena 1200-1550, examines the ‘intensification of connections’ between these polities in the region she calls, the ‘Bay of Bengal-Plus’: that is, the Bay of Bengal, the Coromandel Coast of India, Sri Lanka, the maritime and riverine areas of Burma, and the Mon and Tai territories of mainland Southeast Asia. The book highlights the importance of Pali textuality for the emerging Buddhist kingdoms of Dambadeniya, Sukhothai, Haripunjaya (present-day Lamphun in northern Thailand), Chiang Mai, Ayutthaya, and Hamsavati in lower Burma – Bago today. This was the heartland of what Blackburn calls, the ‘Pali arena’. This book is an important contribution to the emerging scholarship on the intellectual history of the early Theravada Buddhist kingdoms in South and Southeast Asia in the second millennium CE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
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    56 mins