A Wilderness of Possibilities: Urdu Studies in Transnational Perspective

Over the past forty years the study of Urdu literature has played a dynamic role in contemporary discourses on culture and history, reaching out to a far-flung international community of scholars. The ten essays in this volume, assembled for Professor C. M. Naim, a pioneer of Urdu studies in the United States, exemplify the changing place of Urdu in the world today. They discuss diverse aspects of Urdu and Persian literature and poetry, between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. The focus is mainly on Urdu poetry offering a comprehensive introduction to the sociology, culture and politics of its enchanting and complex world but it also includes essays on travelogues, print journalism and a play collection. The contributors are specialists in the field and include such distinguished scholars as Kumkum Sangari, Barbara Metcalf, Gail Minault, and Aditya Behl as well as new scholars in the field doing some really interesting work such as Ramya Sreenivasan. The authors use a combination of approaches: while some articles focus on well-known texts, others focus on individual poets and writers.