Dr. Daud Ali, associate professor and chair of the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, will present Navigating the Past: Contested Horizons in the Historical Writing of India" at the 2018 Harold Holmes Dugger Lecture at 7:30 p.m. April 5 in the University Center Ballroom at Southeast Missouri State University.
The event is free and open to the public and will feature a lecture examining changes in India’s historical scholarship over the past century in relation to the political, ethnic, and religious complexities of both colonial and independent India. Ali’s research centers on mentalities and practices in pre-Sultanate South Asia and encompasses topics such as courtly and monastic discipline, mercantile practices, conventions in erotic poetry and courtship, slavery, and conceptions of space, time, and history in inscriptions. His work also extends to early Southeast Asian history and, more recently, to the study of gardens and landscapes in the medieval Deccan.
Current and future projects include collaborative research on the history of friendship in early and medieval South Asia, a translation of a Buddhist text on erotics, and an examination of the production of the king Bhoja cycles in Western India. The Harold Holmes Dugger Lecture Series, established in 1988 by the Southeast Department of History, honors Dr. Harold Holmes Dugger, professor of diplomatic and intellectual history and former chair of the department. The series highlights topics within Dugger’s areas of teaching and professional interest and is sponsored by the Department of History and the Dugger family.