I am a Junior Research Fellow and the Director of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Christ Church, and an Associate Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, UK. Furthermore, I am a Senior Fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and a Trustee of the American Printing History Association in New York, US. I specialize in the comparative study of religions, literary cultures and book arts in Persian and South Asian societies. To that end, I grapple with historical sources, literary works and religious treatises found in multiple languages, most notably in Persian, Tajiki, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi and Maithili. My publications elaborate upon the ethos of creative imagination, scribal subjectivity, interreligious interaction and transregional connection in early modern and colonial societies. My research projects are multidisciplinary in nature as they explore the methods, theories and findings of history, religious studies, comparative literature and book arts among others.
Rekindling Hope | Inkwork | © 2024 Pranav Prakash
|
My research has been generously supported by several academic and funding institutions. The Newberry Library–École Nationale des Chartes Exchange Fellowship supported my archival research in France. The American Institute of Indian Studies, Chicago, awarded me with a Junior Research Fellowship and the Thomas W. Simons Fellowship to conduct archival and ethno-historiographic research in India. My archival research in England was supported by the T. Anne Clearly International Dissertation Research Fellowship and the Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London. The Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, offered institutional support to me during my archival research in Tajikistan. Several fellowships of the University of Iowa, most notably the Presidential Fellowship by the Graduate College and the Windgate Fellowship by the Center for the Book, have advanced my research on South Asian religions and book arts.
|
My doctoral research shed light on the poetic oeuvre of Ḥasan Sijzī Dihlavī (1253–c.1336), its creative and critical engagement with early modern literary cultures, performative traditions, mystical thought and vernacular audiences. My dissertation was supervised by Prof. Frederick M. Smith and Prof. Philip A. Lutgendorf. My dissertation committee was constituted of Prof. Carl. W. Ernst, Prof. Paul R. Greenough, Prof. Morten Schlütter and Prof. Paul Dilley. For unraveling the biography, literary works and cultural legacy of Ḥasan, I have conducted extensive archival and ethno-historiographic research in India, Iran, Tajikistan, Jordan, England, France and the US.
My early years were spent in a Maithili-speaking community in an Indian town located near the border of Nepal. From the age of nine to sixteen, I studied in a Hindu monastic school in east India, where I received rigorous training in Vedic, Sanskrit, Hindi and Bengali traditions. During my graduate studies at the University of Iowa, I studied Sanskrit and Prakrit with Prof. Frederick Smith, Hindi and Avadhi with Prof. Philip Lutgendorf, South Asian historiography with Prof. Paul Greenough, and the history of the book with Prof. Paul Dilley. I received advanced training in the study of Prakrit and Mughal Persian sources, under the auspices of the American Institute of Indian Studies, at Pune and Lucknow respectively. The University of Tehran offered me a full scholarship to pursue an MA in Iranian Studies jointly at the Faculty of World Studies (FWS), Dehkhoda Lexicon Institute (DLI) and International Center for Persian Studies (ICPS).
At the DLI and ICPS, I studied classical Persian literature and Sufi poetry with Prof. Iraj Shahbazi, Persian folkloric and epic traditions with Prof. Pegah Khadish, and modern Persian literature and Persian stylistics with Prof. Ziya Qasemi. At the FWS, Prof. Mohammed Samiei trained me in the history of Iranian Shiʿism and Prof. Mahdi Ahouie in the geopolitical history of Iran. After graduating from Tehran, I continued my study of classical Persian and Sufi traditions with Prof. Carl W. Ernst at Chapel Hill. As a visiting researcher in Tajikistan, I read Tajiki history and literature with regional scholars in Dushanbe and Khujand. To deepen my understanding of Islamic societies, I studied Classical Arabic at the Qasid Arabic Institute in Amman, Jordan.
|
At the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford, I have taught courses on classical Hindi literature with a focus on early modern poetic and narrative traditions. My courses on modernist Hindi literature at Oxford were aimed at elucidating the emergence of progressive movements in twentienth-century India. I have offered workshops on Perso-Arabic calligraphy for fellows of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, Rare Book School, University of Virginia. In collaboration with the British Library, I organized a worskhop on early modern South Asian manuscript cultures for the students of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. As a primary instructor and teaching assistant at the University of Iowa, I taught humanities courses pertaining to Asian religious traditions, South Asian history and cultures, Buddhism, Classical Mythology and Judaism. I offered courses on Sanskrit and Prakrit literatures to undergraduate and graduate students at the summer schools organized by the American Institute of Indian Studies, Deccan College, Pune; the South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI), Univeristy of Wisconsin–Madison; and the Khāne-ye Honar in Tehran, Iran. The UI Department of Religious Studies awarded me with the Alice Lampe Heidel & John B. Heidel Award in recognition of my commitment to teaching and exceptional service to undergraduate students.
|
Gaze | Inkwork | © 2024 Pranav Prakash
|
I am the chief editor of the H-Net Mideast Politics (Humanities and Social Sciences Online, Michigan State University). I have translated Persian abstracts for the Muslim Civilizations Abstracts Project at the Aga Khan University, London, for four years (2015–19). In recent years, I have transcribed and translated Maithili folktales for an ethnographic project led by Prof. Coralynn V. Davis, Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies and Anthropology at the Bucknell University, and Mr. Carlos Gomez, an independent filmmaker and activist. Furthermore, I have copy-edited and proofread the Avadhi text of all volumes of Rāmcaritmānas, as well as the Braj text of Satsaī, for the Murty Classical Library, published by the Harvard University Press. I used to host a couple of talk shows on the national radio of Iran, Ṣedā va Simā-ye Jamhuri-ye Islāmi-ye Iran, under the direction of Ms. Ṭāhira Julāni. I am passionate about my painting, calligraphy and book arts, and enjoy listening to Classical Persian and Hindustani music in my spare time.
Ph. D. in Religious Studies, University of Iowa, US.
Dissertation Title: Reimagining Sufi Poetics in South Asia: The Literary Oeuvre of Ḥasan Sijzī Dihlavī (1253-c.1336).
Adviser: Prof. Frederick M. Smith (Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions, U–Iowa).
Co-Adviser: Prof. Philip A. Lutgendorf (Professor Emeritus of Hindi, U–Iowa).
Committee: Prof. Carl W. Ernst (Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies, UNC–Chapel Hill), Prof. Paul R. Greenough (Professor Emeritus of History, U–Iowa), Prof. Morten Schlütter (Professor of Religious Studies, U–Iowa) and Prof. Paul Dilley (Professor of Religious Studies & Classics, U–Iowa).
M. A. in Religious Studies, University of Iowa, US.
Adviser: Prof. Frederick M. Smith (Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions, U–Iowa).
Co-Adviser: Prof. Philip A. Lutgendorf (Professor Emeritus of Hindi, U–Iowa).
M. A. in Iranian Studies, University of Tehran, Iran.
Thesis Title: Old Iranian Story, New Iranian Book: The Politics of Textual Criticism in Modern Iran (Dāstān-e Kohan-e Fārsi, Ketāb-e Novin-e Irān: Siyāsat-e Taṣḥiḥ-e Motun dar Irān).
Adviser: Prof. Iraj Shahbazi (Professor of Persian Literature, University of Tehran).
Co-Adviser: Prof. Muhammad Samiei (Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Tehran).
Dissertation Title: Reimagining Sufi Poetics in South Asia: The Literary Oeuvre of Ḥasan Sijzī Dihlavī (1253-c.1336).
Adviser: Prof. Frederick M. Smith (Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions, U–Iowa).
Co-Adviser: Prof. Philip A. Lutgendorf (Professor Emeritus of Hindi, U–Iowa).
Committee: Prof. Carl W. Ernst (Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies, UNC–Chapel Hill), Prof. Paul R. Greenough (Professor Emeritus of History, U–Iowa), Prof. Morten Schlütter (Professor of Religious Studies, U–Iowa) and Prof. Paul Dilley (Professor of Religious Studies & Classics, U–Iowa).
M. A. in Religious Studies, University of Iowa, US.
Adviser: Prof. Frederick M. Smith (Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions, U–Iowa).
Co-Adviser: Prof. Philip A. Lutgendorf (Professor Emeritus of Hindi, U–Iowa).
M. A. in Iranian Studies, University of Tehran, Iran.
Thesis Title: Old Iranian Story, New Iranian Book: The Politics of Textual Criticism in Modern Iran (Dāstān-e Kohan-e Fārsi, Ketāb-e Novin-e Irān: Siyāsat-e Taṣḥiḥ-e Motun dar Irān).
Adviser: Prof. Iraj Shahbazi (Professor of Persian Literature, University of Tehran).
Co-Adviser: Prof. Muhammad Samiei (Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Tehran).
