Position:

Professor in Indian History and Culture

Faculty / College Address:

Oriental Institute / St Cross College

Email:

rosalind.ohanlon@orinst.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

• Social and intellectual history of India
• Histories of caste in India
• Histories of empire, gender and the body
• Social and religious history of Maharashtra

Current Projects:

• Caste and the making of Brahman identities in early modern Maharashtra
• The history of penance and purification in India
• Oxford Early Modern South Asia Project
• Oxford Centre for Early Modern Studies

Courses Taught:

• History and Culture of South Asia
• Societies and Economies in India, c. 1600-1800
• Gender and Society in India, c. 1800 to the present.

Supervision Areas:

I welcome enquiries from graduate students interested in the following areas of research: social history of early modern Maharashtra; social and religious history of colonial India; discourses and practices of gender in India; social history of Hinduism; histories of the body in India.

Recent Publications:

• 'Kingdom, household and body: history, gender and imperial service under Akbar' in Modern Asian Studies, 41.5: September 2007
• 'Cultural Pluralism, Empire and the State in Early Modern South Asia' in Indian Economic and Social History Review, 44.3: 2007
• 'Military Sports and the History of the Martial Body in India', in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 50.4: 2007
• ‘What makes people who they are? Pandit networks and the problem of livelihoods in early modern western India’ in Indian Economic and Social History Review XLV. No. 3, July-September 2008. With C. Minkowski.
• ‘Narratives of Penance and Purification in Western India, c. 1650-1850’ in Journal of Hindu Studies, 2, 1(2009), 48-75.
• ‘Letters Home: Banaras pandits and the Maratha Regions in early modern India’, in Rosalind O’Hanlon (ed.), ‘Knowledges in circulation in early modern India’, special issue of Modern Asian Studies, 44, 2 (March 2010), 201-240.
• ‘The social worth of scribes: Brahmans, kayasthas and the social order in early modern India’ in Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook (eds), ‘Munshis, Pandits and Record Keepers: Scribal Communities and Historical Change in India’, Special Issue of The Indian Social and Economic History Review 47, 4 (October-December 2010), 563-595.
• ‘Speaking from Siva’s temple: Banaras scholar households and the Brahman ‘ecumene’ of Mughal India’ in Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook (eds), Religious Cultures in Early Modern India: New Perspectives.  Routledge, 2011, first published as Special Issue of South Asian History and Culture, 2, No. 2, April 2011, 253-277.
• ‘Performance in a World of Paper:  Puranic Histories and Social Communication in Early Modern India’ in Past and Present (forthcoming).