Read back issues of South Asia News
South Asia News is the print publication of the South Asia Language and Area Center, Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and South Asia Outreach.
(Click each issue title for book reviews, essays, and download link)
Review of Kajri Jain, Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art, by Aishwarya Lakshmi
Review of Sunil Goonasekara, Walking to Kataragama, by Jim Sykes
Review of Theresa Jill Buckland, Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities, by Rumya P. Chatterjee
Review of Janet O'Shea, At Home in the World, by Rumya P. Chatterjee
Review of Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Lucknow: City of Illusion, by C.M. Naim
Review of Tejaswini Niranjana, Mobilizing India: Women, Music and Migration between India and Trinidad, by Rumya S. Putcha
Review of Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Thailand, by Benjamin Schonthal
Review of Robert DeCaroli, Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism, by Jeannette Darcy
Review of Daud Ali, Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India, by Blake Wentworth
Review of John Clifford Holt, The Buddhist Visnu: Religious Transformation, Politics, and Culture, by Gautham Reddy
Review of Laurie L. Patton, Bringing the Gods to Mind: Mantra and Ritual in Early Indian Sacrifice, by Jeannette Darcy
Review of John Whelpton, A History of Nepal, by Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz
Review of Richard Robinson and Vedi R. Hadiz, Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets, by Rachel Rinaldo
Review of Susan Seizer, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage: An Ethnography of Special Drama Artists in South India, by Jim Sykes
Review of Leela Gandhi, Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-Siecle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship, by Sean Dowdy
Review of Anne Feldhaus, Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage, and Geographical Imagination in India, by Aaron Rester
Review of Mani Ratnam, Kannattil Muttamittal ("A Peck on the Cheek"), by Sally Noble
Review of The Choices Program (Watson Institute for International Studies), Indian Independence and the Question of Pakistan, by Steven Goldberg
Review of Harbans Mukhia, The Mughals of India, by Rajeev Kinra
Review of Corinne Atwood and Annemarie Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture, by Rajeev Kinra
Review of Neluka Silva, The Gendered Nation: Contemporary Writings from South Asia, by Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury
Review of Bhatta Jayanta, Much Ado about Religion, by Whitney Cox
Review of Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain, by Manan Ahmed
Review of David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn, Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography and Life History, by Jocelyn Marrow
Review of Sharad Chari, Fraternal Capital: Peasant-Workers, Self-Made Men, and Globalization in Provincial India, by Sareeta B. Amrute
Review of Mandakranta Bose, The Ramayana Revisited, by Adheesh Sathaye
Review of Ali Riaz, God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh, by Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury
Review of S.H. Hasbullah and Barrie M. Morrison, Sri Lankan Society in an Era of Globalization: Struggling to Create a New Social Order, by Jim Sykes
Review of Amitava Kumar, Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate, by Lisa Outar
"Bringing It Home: Chicago Area Teacher Balasz Dibuz Enriches his Classroom after 2003 Fulbright-Hays Group Project in India"
Review of James L. Fitzgerald, Mahabharata: 11. The Book of the Women. 12. The Book of the Peace, Part One, by Whitney Cox
Review of Tryna Lyons, The Artists of Nathadwara: The Practice of Painting in Rajasthan, by Aishwarya Lakshmi
Review of Neil DeVotta, Blowback: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, by Benjamin Schonthal
Review of Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World, by Genevieve Lakier
Review of Carla M. Sinopoli, The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in South India, c. 1350-1650, by Peter G. Johansen
Review of David Weir, Brahma in the West: William Blake and the Oriental Renaissance, by Bali Sahota
Review of Arild Engelsen Ruud, Poetics of Village Politics: The Making of West Bengal's Rural Communism, by Sharmistha Gooptu
Review of William Mazzarella, Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India, by Richard Delacy
"Tribute to Bernard Cohn, 1928-2003" by Sudipta Sen
Review of Steven Kemper, Buying and Believing: Sri Lankan Advertising and Consumers in a Transnational World, by Benjamin Schonthal
Review of Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, by Ira Parnekar
Review of Lionel Caplan, Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World, by Amanda Hamilton
Review of Sumit Sarkar, Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History, by Shreeyash Palshikar
Reivew of Jeanne Openshaw, Seeking Bauls of Bengal, by Bertie Kibreah
Review of David Shulman, The Wisdom of Poets: Studies in Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit, by Whitney Cox
Review of Christophe Jaffrelot, Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation?, by Elena Bashir
Review of Matthew Kapstein, Reason's Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought, by Erik Davis
Review of Hugh B. Urban, Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal, by Jeremy Morse
Review of Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay, by Nikhil Rao
Review of Ludo Rocher, Jimutavahana's Dayabhaga: The Hindu Law of Inheritance in Bengal, by Ethan Kroll
Review of Prem Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology, and Identity, by Aaron Rester
Review of Laurie L. Patton, Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India, by A.J. Nicholson
Review of Frank Stewart, Samrat Upadhyay, and Manjushree Thapa, Secret Places: New Writing from Nepal, by Mark Flummerfelt
Review of Jeffrey J. Kripal, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism, by David Clairmont
"Norman Cutler, 1949-2002, smaranartham" by Sheldon Pollock
Review of Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, by McKim Marriott
Review of Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Lloyd I. Rudolph, and Mohan Singh Kanota, Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary, a Colonial Subject's Narrative of Imperial India, by Jocelyn Marrow
Review of David Cannadine, Ornamentalism, by Gerard Siarny and Manan Ahmed
Review of Larry Goodson, Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban, by Irving Birkner
Review of Stephen P. Cohen, Emerging Power: India, by Sanjay Gautam
"For an Academic 'Socialism'" by Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Review of Arjun Appadurai, Globalization, by Sareeta Amrute
Review of Shaheen Sardar Ali and Javaid Rehman, Indigenous People and Ethnic Minorities of Pakistan: Constitutional and Legal Perspectives, by Elena Bashir
Review of Roger Ellis and Liz Oakley-Brown, Translation and Nation: Towards a Cultural Politics of Englishness, by Arlene Zide
Review of From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report, by Ira Parnekar
Review of Isabelle Nabakov, Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals, by U.R. Giridharan
Review of Raja Menon, A Nuclear Strategy for India, by Ethan Kroll
Review of Rows and Rows of Fences: Ritwik Ghatak on Cinema, by Erin O'Donnell
"Papier-Mache Ganeshas and Goddesses of Beauty: Children's Artwork from the Rajmata Krishna Kumari Girls' School" by Ericka Schnitzer
Review of Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere, Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, by Jonathan Gold
Review of Margaret Beissinger, Jane Tylus, and Susanne Wofford, Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World, by Sareeta Bipin Amrute
Review of Martha Ann Selby, Grow Long, Blessed Night: Love Poems from Classical India, by Blake Wentworth
Review of Frank E. Reynolds and Jason A. Carbine, The Life of Buddhism, by David Clairmont
Review of Raka Roy, Fields of Protest: Women's Movements in India, by Kavita Daiya
Review of Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, by B.G. Karisson
"Khicuri" by Emily K. Bloch
"In Praise of Mr. Dimock: Two Songs of Tribute" by Wendy Doniger and Clinton Seely
Review of Giles Tillotson, The Artificial Empire: The Indian Landscapes of William Hodges, by Faiza Mushtaq
Review of Rob Jenkins, Democratic Politics and Economic Reform in India, by Ira Parnekar
Review of Kevin Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, by David Clairmont
Review of Janet Gyatso, Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary, by Dan Arnold
Review of Sherry B. Ortner, Life and Death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering, by Heather Hindman
Review of Michael J. Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War, by Rajeev Kinra
"Retirement Tributes to C.M. Naim and Frank Reynolds" by Ralph Nicholas and Wendy Doniger
Review of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Early Urdu Literary Culture and History, by Jennifer Dubrow
Review of H.L. Seneviratne, The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka, by Daniel Veidlinger
Review of Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory, by Melinda Pilling
Review of Jeremy Seabrook, Love in a Different Climate: Men Who Have Sex with Men in India, by Shohini Ghosh
Review of Partha Chatterjee, Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal, by William Mazzarella
"Sculpture in Motion" by Mausumi Roy
Review of George Hart and Hank Heifitz, Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from the Classical Tamil (Purananuru), by Whitney Cox
Review of Kali for Women, Truth Tales: Contemporary Stories by Women Writers of India, by Debali Mookerjea
Review of Tirthankar Roy, Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India, by Sujatha Fernandes
Review of David Ludden, An Agrarian History of South Asia, by Blake Wentworth
Review of Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History, by Manan Ahmed
"Through the Glass, Clearly: The MacMillan Modern Indian Novels in Translation" by Mini Krishnan and Emily K. Bloch
"In Memoriam: Mysore Narsinhachar Srinavas (1916-1999)" by McKim Marriott
"Ramayan in Southeast Asia" by Newal K. Agnihotri
Review of Bonnie Wade, Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art and Culture in Mughal India, by Bertie Kibreah
"Khicuri" by Emily K. Bloch
Review of Gurharpal Singh and Ian Talbot, Punjabi Identity: Continuity and Change, by Pashaura Singh
A dialogue between David Lawrence and Jeffrey Gore
Review of Andrew Fort, Jivanmukti in Transformation: Embodied Liberation in Advaita and Neo-Vedanta, by Deepak Sarma
Review of Donald Lopez, Asian Religions in Practice: An Introduction, by Greg Grieve
"A Handicraft Revolution" by Cassie Adcock
"Journey through Dance" by Puja Lalmalani
Review of Lee Siegel, Love in a Dead Language, by Harish Trivedi
Review of Vijay Prasad, The Karma of Brown Folk, by Anil Lal
Review of Matthew T. Kapstein and Melvyn C. Goldstein, Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity, by Melinda Pilling
Review of Richard Salomon, Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhara: The British Library Kharosthi Fragments, by Dan Arnold
Review of Eivind Kahrs, Indian Semantic Analysis: The Nirvacana Tradition, by Whitney Cox
"Colonial Monuments, Heroin Addicts and Schoolboys: A Picture of Karachi" by Sheheryar Hasnain
"The Drums of War, or How I Met My Tabla Teacher" by Joan L. Erdman
"Ritwik Ghatak" by Erin O'Donnell
"Singing Painters of Bengal" by Emily K. Bloch
"The Art of Shisha Embroidery" by Deborah Bhattacharya
Review of Vidya Dehejia, Representing the Body: Gender Issues in Indian Art, by Katherine Ulrich
An interview with Sheheryar Hasnain and Christy Mock
Review of Susan Bayly, Caste Studies: The New Baseline, by Ananya Vajpeyi
Review of Wendy Doniger, Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India, by Wendy O'Flaherty
Review of David Peter Lawrence, Rediscovering God with Transcendental Argument: A Contemporary Interpretation of Monistic Kashmiri Saiva Philosophy, by Jeffrey Gore
Review of Claire M. Wilkinson-Weber, Embroidering Lives: Work and Skill in the Lucknow Embroidery Industry, by Vaswati R. Sinha
"She Came to Fetch Water" by Kishori Lal
Back online reviews
Review of Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space, by Aishwarya Lakshmi (download)
Review of Betty Joseph, Reading the East India Company, 1720-1840: Colonial Currencies of Gender, by Aishwarya Lakshmi (download)
Review of Barbara N. Ramusack, The Indian Princes and their States, by Bali Sahota (download)
Review of Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy, by Benjamin Schonthal (download)
Review of Sanjeev Prakash and Per Salle, Investigating Social Capital: Comparative Perspectives on Civil Society, by Liza Weinstein (download)
Review of Osho, Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic, by Gretchen Badami (download)
Review of Jeffrey J. Kripal and Rachel Fell McDermott, Encountering Kali in the Margins, at the Center, in the West, by Brian Collins (download)
Review of Antoinette Burton, Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India, by Heather Hindman (download)
Review of Arvind Sharma, Women Saints in World Religions, by David Clairmont (download)
Review of Judith M. Brown, Nehru: A Political Life, by Boria Majumdar (download)
Review of Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta, The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India, by Debali Mookerjee (download)
Review of Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship in Postcolonial India, by Ananya Vajpeyi (download)