Professor Heidi Pauwels together with Professor Purnima Dhavan in the Department of History have just published “Crafting literary Urdu: Mirza Hatim’s engagement with Vali Dakhani” in the Cambridge-based journal Modern Asian Studies, doi:10.1017/S0026749X22000166.
They have received an NEH Collaborative Research Grant to complete the manuscript for their related co-authored book: Urdu’s Origins Revisited: Vali Dakhani’s Reception in Multilingual South Asia, which is under contract with Bloomsbury, London. Their research will expand the Urdu canon and place early Urdu poetry in a broader historical and multilingual context, offering evidence for its circulation across diverse communities. Intervening in the broader humanities’ debate about the relationship between cosmopolitan and vernacular cultures, their work shows how cosmopolitanisms are constantly changing, in ways influenced, accessed, and mediated by local networks.
Teaching Professor Jameel Ahmad will also be involved in the project by bringing the results of their research to a larger Urdu-audience via his upcoming podcast series - stay tuned for more!