Friends, I am delighted to share that a paper of mine, entitled (partially) "Krishna the Magician" [more or less the journal article incarnation of the talk I will deliver this weekend at AAR], has been accepted for publication at JRAS as of a day ago. Excited for this one.

one of the few living singers I take deathly seriously, one of the last punk souls alive

Very happy to share that my article, "Kṛṣṇa the Magician: metapoesis and ambivalence in Faiḍī's Mahābhārat," has been published (online, print issue comes later) by the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Hello friends: I will be at AAS in Seattle this Sunday, presenting a paper alongside Kartik Maini Kartik Maini and Fatima Afzal Fatima Afzal at our panel on self-fashioning and (inter)-religious interaction ("Oneself as Another"); Azfar Moin is our respondent #AAS2024

I am delighted to announce that I will be giving a talk on music and political self-fashioning in the early modern Deccan next month in my home department at @uchicago.

My brother's book (on Constantine) releases soon from Oxford University Press! The other political theologian in the family global.oup.com/academic/produ…

superb paper from a good friend and conversation partner

Does anyone know of a good academic source on baiyināt in its technical numerological meaning?

My long-awaited article, Seigneurial predation in the late medieval feud, is finally up in Past & Present: academic.oup.com/past/advance-a…

Does anyone I follow have a pdf or scan of the "Mabda’-i jahān" ascribed to Shaikh ‘Abd al-Ghanī Ṣūfī? The "totfim" archive used to have a copy before it went down, but no longer does.

My good friend Shariq Khan's fantastic article on the limits of literary formalism is out at long last, hot off the presses from the Journal of Urdu Studies! brill.com/view/journals/…

These bodies come to an end; But that vast embodied Self is ageless, fathomless, eternal. - Bhagavad Gita, 2.18

What happened Paul Silverman's translation of Hans Kelsen's Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts? Was the book somehow retracted?

A digital humanities project of mine, metagita.net, has launched! We're starting to add materials to the site, building up an archive of historical translations, editions, and commentaries on the Bhagavadgītā -- also more reader functionalities -- so stay tuned!

Is inputting according to TEI practical for right to left scripts and languages (such as Persian/Arabic)?

The best Schmitt overview I've ever heard. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/int…

Forthcoming (Jan. 2026) Sam Zeitlin’s translation of Schmitt’s polemical history of the Second Reich is out next year amazon.com/State-Composit…

C. M. Naim, a giant of the field, has sadly passed away. Although I never took a class from him, he was a (venerable) presence in my life for 20 years, at presentations, defenses, in Muzaffar Alam's courses, as a visitor at AIIS Lucknow, etc. Rest in peace.

UChicago, say it ain't so