11 June 2010, St Antony’s College, Oxford

Over the last two decades, scholars have begun to rethink the histories of medieval and ‘early modern’ South Asia in terms of continuities rather than as disconnected ‘periods’. The centuries of the early modern were characterised by complex economies and trade relations, cultural pluralism, the rise of regional societies and languages and literatures alongside the spread of cosmopolitanism, the emergence and success of professional scribes and poets, as well as a variety of developments in religious and sectarian traditions. These developments are seen on one hand, to have continued from the ‘early medieval’ times and on the other, as continuing into the centuries of the ‘modern’. They have also been viewed as akin to similar developments in other parts of the early modern world, thus questioning the dominant notion that ‘modernity’ was a European phenomenon, ‘granted’ to the East through its contact with the West.

Study of the medieval and early modern necessarily implies the search for new sources, or new ways of reading familiar sources: inscriptions, courtly narratives, genealogies, caste and regional Puranas, travellers’ accounts, records of personal and official legal disputes, coins, architectural styles and archaeological evidence.  This workshop aims to facilitate discussion between scholars working with a variety of sources in order to improve understanding of the ways in which early modern South Asian history can be conceptualised and written.

Participants:

Conference Organizers:

Aparna Kapadia
Polly O’Hanlon
Nandita Prasad Sahai

There is no fee for attendance.  To register, please contact Polly O’Hanlon at rosalind.ohanlon@orinst.ox.ac.uk.

Workshop Programme: Please click here
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Sponsored by the Faculty of Oriental Studies and St Antony’s College.