"Similarity and Alterity in the Early Modern Persianate Imaginary" by Mana Kia (Columbia University)

Department: Center for Persian Studies and Culture

Date and Time: May 18, 2018 | 6:00 PM-8:00 PM

Event Location: Humanities Gateway (HG) 1010

Event Details


Please join us on Friday, May 18, 2018, 6-8 pm in UC Irvine's Humanities Gateway (HG) 1010 for a talk titled “Similarity and Alterity in the Early Modern Persianate Imaginary” by Professor Mana Kia (Columbia University).

Dr. Mana Kia is an Assistant Professor of Indo-Persian Studies at Columbia University. Her interests are the early modern and modern connective social, cultural, intellectual histories of West, Central and South Asia from the 17th - 19th centuries, with a particular focus on Indo-Persian literary culture and social history. Her interests include: ruptures and continuities between the early modern and modern periods, intra-Asian travel and migration, gender and sexuality, historiographies beyond nationalism, and critical scrutiny of our own analytic and conceptual language for studying the past. She is currently finishing a book on transregional Persianate sensibilities of belonging in the 18th century, which critiques protonationalist modes of envisioning West and South Asian cultures and societies, and offers new modes of understanding the importance of the circulation of people, texts, and ideas between these regions. She has also begun work on a project examining the relationship between early modern ethics of love and loyalty in companionship and the production of Persian texts commonly used as source materials for the study of 18th-century India. She completed her PhD at Harvard University, MA at NYU, and BA at Vassar College. She has also been a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

This event is presented by UC Irvine's Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture.

This talk is free and open to the public. No registration is required.