Cosmopolitan Cultures and Oceanic Thought

This book imagines the ocean as central to understanding the world and its connections in history, literature and the social sciences. It analyzes the histories of movement and traversing across connected spaces of water and land sedimented in literary texts, local histories, music and performance.

Autorentext

Dilip M. Menon is a historian and currently the Mellon Chair in Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand. South Africa.

Nishat Zaidi is Professor and former Head, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India.

Inhalt

Note on Contributors

Introduction

Nishat Zaidi and Dilip Menon

Section I: The Poetics of Fluvial Cosmopolitanism

1. Going Below the Waterline: Hydrocolonial Methods, Creolized Water

Isabel Hofmeyr

2.Fellowship and Aversion in the South: The Challenges of South-South Collaboration

Elleke Boehmer

3. Found in Prison: The Poetics of Oceanic Histories

Geeta Patel

4. Remembering the Bengal Delta: ca. 1450-1850

Rila Mukherjee

5. "The wind sketches landscapes of words": Oceanic poetics in the Horn of Africa and western Indian Ocean"

Kelsey McFaul

Section II: Oceanic Narratives

6. Padmabati of the Oceans: Unfreedom and Belonging in Syed Alaol's Padmabati

Swati Moitra

7. Senses Translated: Päapp us in the Indian Ocean, Circulation of Texts and Sounds across Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit Cosmopoleis

Ihsan Ul Ihthisam

Section III: Constructing Space

8. Of Those on Shore: The Dhow Trade and Mobility in the Indian Ocean

Nidhi Mahajan

9. Towards an Architecture of the Indian Ocean: Mapping the Syncretic Grammar of Coastal Cities & Architecture through Ibn Battuta's Water Journeys (1342-1347)

Iqtedar Alam

10. Through the Eyes of the Boat People: Redefining Oceans in the 21st century

Chrisalice Ela Joseph and Vinod Balakrishnan

Section IV: Religion, Knowledge and Law Across the Oceans

11. Literate Illiterates: Arabi-Malayalam and Parallel Process of Knowledge Production among Muslims in Kerala

M.H.Ilias.

12. Ulam Networks across the Seas: Understanding the Trajectory of Islam in Medieval Malabar

Mohammed Shameem K. K.

13. Encountering the 'Other: Pilgrims at Sea and Accounts of Journeys to Hejaz in the Age of Oceanic Mobility

Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil

14. Christianity, Conversion and Caste: Reflecting on Identity in Dalit Christian Malayalam Writings in Post-Colonial India

Steven S. George

15. Rainbow Waters: Towards a Queer Coalition between India and Botswana

Kashish Dua

Index