via TAYLOR & FRANCIS ONLINE on MARCH 8, 2015:
Sunday 8th March 2015 is International Women’s Day (IWD). To mark the occasion, Routledge are delighted to offer you free online access to a wide range of articles exploring the role women play in a variety of industries. With access to over 200 articles, we know what you’ll be doing this IWD!
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“Our field is a cautionary tale on the dangers of linking independent academic research to military intelligence.” — Sarah Kendzior
by SARAH KENDZIOR for SARAH KENDZIOR blog on MARCH 8, 2015:
Yesterday I gave the keynote speech at the 22nd conference of the Association of Central Eurasian Students at Indiana University. I am an alumnus of the Central Eurasian Studies (CEUS) program at IU so it was exciting to get to talk to the next generation, even though I may have traumatized them with this talk. Below, the text of my speech:
As you may already know, I am a CEUS alumnus, and I look back at my time here mostly with appreciation. While I was here, of course, I complained about CEUS with everyone else, even coining the phrase “afCEUSki” to describe it – that’s a joke for the Uzbek specialists in the room — but the truth is there is tremendous value in area studies programs, particularly programs that emphasize languages and history in the way CEUS does.
You never know how much you appreciate CEUS until you’re out in the real world answering questions like “Where is Central Asia?” with “It’s in the center of Asia”. So it’s great to be talking with young scholars who know beyond the basics and are interested in the future of the field. Continue reading
by SHERALI TAREEN for NEW BOOKS IN ISLAMIC STUDIES on FEBRUARY 19, 2015:
The idea of jihad is among the most keenly discussed yet one of the least understood concepts in Islam. In her brilliant new book Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists (University of California Press, 2013), Cabeiri Robinson, Associate Professor of International Studies and South Asian Studies at the University of Washington engages the question of what might an anthropology of jihad look like. By shifting the focus from theological and doctrinal discussions on the normative understandings and boundaries of jihad in Islam, Robinson instead asks the question of how people live with perennial violence in their midst? Continue reading
by IAN COOK for NEW BOOKS IN SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES on FEBRUARY 18, 2015:
[Cross-posted from New Books in South Asian Studies] In his new book Recasting the Region: Language, Culture, and Islam in Colonial Bengal (Oxford University Press, 2014), 
Neilesh Bose analyses the trajectories of Muslim Bengali politics in the first half of the twentieth century. The literary and cultural history of the region explored in the book reveal the pointedly Bengali ideas of Pakistan that arose as an empire ended and new countries were born.
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by SHERALI TAREEN for NEW BOOKS IN ISLAMIC STUDIES on DECEMBER 24, 2014:
In her brilliant new book, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (University of Hawaii Press, 2013), Kavita Datla, Associate Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, explores the interaction of language, nationalism, and secularism by focusing on the religious and social imaginaries of important twentieth century Muslim scholars from the state of Hyderabad, especially those associated with the institution of Osmania University.
How were Urdu and Arabic mobilized for projects of nationalism by the pioneers of Osmania University, and in what ways can a history of such intellectual and social projects complicate the religion/secular binary? This is among the central questions that anchor the conceptual stakes of this important book. By effortlessly weaving together a close reading of previously unexplored primary texts with nuanced historiographical analysis of the colonial context, Datla presents an intellectually rich and exciting examination of modern Indian Muslim understandings of and engagements with the question of nationalism. In our conversation, we talked about the problem of the religion/secular binary, Hyderabad and Osmania University, the role of language in the construction of religious and national identity, translation and nationalism, and Urdu’s relationship in colonial India with other languages. This book will be of great interest and benefit to scholars and students of modern Islam, nationalism, South Asia, and Muslim education.
LISTEN HERE: INTERVIEW WITH KAVITA DATLA
In September 2014 the Duke Islamic Studies Center (which manages the Transcultural Islam Project of which TIRN is a part), announced its official institutional affiliation with New Books in Islamic Studies — a bi-weekly audio podcast featuring hour long conversations with authors of exciting new research. For an archive see HERE.