Oceanic Islam: Muslim Universalism and European Imperialism

Author Conversations Series, Fall 2020

Speakers/Editors: Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University and Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History, Tufts University

Discussant: James Robson, James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; William Fung Director of the Harvard University Asia Center

Produced by the Harvard University Asia Center

Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University. His main field of specialization is modern South Asian and Indian Ocean history. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997. His books include A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (2006), His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire (2011), The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood (2017), and, with Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (4th edition, 2017).

Ayesha Jalal is the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University, who specializes in the history and politics of Pakistan and India. She received her Ph.D. in history from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. In1998 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Her books include Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam (2000), Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (2008), The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide (2013), and, with Sugata Bose, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (4th edition, 2017).

James Robson is the James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the William Fung Director of the Harvard University Asia Center. He is also the Chair of the Regional Studies East Asia M.A. program. Robson received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Stanford University in 2002, after spending many years researching in China, Taiwan, and Japan. He specializes in the history of medieval Chinese Buddhism and Daoism and is particularly interested in issues of sacred geography, local religious history, and Chan/Zen Buddhism. He has been engaged in a long-term collaborative research project with the École Française d’Extrême-Orient studying local religious statuary from Hunan province. He is the author of Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak [Nanyue 南嶽] in Medieval China (Harvard, 2009), which was awarded the Stanislas Julien Prize for 2010 by the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres and the 2010 Toshihide Numata Book Prize in Buddhism. Robson is also the author of "Signs of Power: Talismanic Writings in Chinese Buddhism" (History of Religions 48:2), "Faith in Museums: On the Confluence of Museums and Religious Sites in Asia" (PMLA, 2010), and "A Tang Dynasty Chan Mummy [roushen] and a Modern Case of Furta Sacra? Investigating the Contested Bones of Shitou Xiqian." His current research includes a long-term project on the history of the confluence of Buddhist monasteries and mental hospitals in East Asia.