The Hijab Ban in Karnataka
The false religious and social dichotomy in Karnataka politics is not reflected in the historical reality of the region, and is instead a concerted political effort contemporaneous with the rise of right-wing politics.
Partition, Literature, and History: a Personal Reflection on ‘Toba Tek Singh’ and ‘If They Come for Us’
Though it’s been some months and even years since I’d first read these works, I have not stopped thinking about them, wanting to talk about them.
Regulating Bodies: Gender Construction in Japan
The implementation of a Euroamerican binary in nineteenth century Japan fuelled an erasure of indigenous gender identities; the subsequent impact of centring biological sex had significant effect on contemporary Japanese society.
SOAS History Blog Podcast, Ep. 4: The Ramayana – History as Storytelling, Storytelling as History
Listen to our two part episode about the Ramayana, the history of story telling, and the place of storytelling in history.
Poetry as History Analysis: Seeking Ancient Egypt’s Urban History in Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias
Percy Shelley’s poem ‘Ozymandias’ serves as an analytical lens for both the Europeanisation of contemporary notions of ancient Egypt, and is itself a testament to the legacy of Ramasses II’s legacy.
A Pair of Male Ducks: Traces of Queerness in Jin Dynasty China
This article is chiefly an examination of an ivory-white porcelain from Ding kiln in Quyang produced for mass domestic use during the Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE).[1] This porcelain shows a pair of male Mandarin ducks which, this article contends, could be read as a trace of queer aesthetics.
When Things Go Wrong: Smuggling Artefacts from Baghdad to London in the late 19th Century
Many of the artefacts we see today in the ‘Ancient Near East’ collections of European and American museums were purchased in the late 19th and early 20th century from dealers who specialised in smuggling archaeological artefacts to Europe from Baghdad.