This talk will focus on Robb's book Print and the Urdu Public, an analysis of the development of Urdu journalism in colonial India through a microstudy of the newspaper Madinah. The newspaper connected an anti-colonial voice that contested not only British colonial power, but also national party politics, in a way that linked both explicitly and implicitly with Muslim identity. This newspaper helped delineate the boundaries of a Muslim public conversation in a way that emphasized rootedness to local politics and small urban spaces. Another way of thinking about the book is to say that overall it is interested in two tasks - first, why is it important to consider alignments with space and time when defining public spheres? This means acknowledging that what constitutes a public can vary dramatically according to the alignments that public makes with specific geographic places, in particular the qasbah in South Asia, and in particular with the Persianate past. Second, it argues we should take lithographed newspapers seriously as sources that can tell us something about everyday Muslim life and piety. The book’s argument tackles these two tasks – localizing the public, and taking lithographed newspapers seriously - by focusing on the case study of a previously under-studied newspaper called Madinah, which was published in Bijnor qasbah in the then-United Provinces from 1912, under the guidance of a man called Maulana Majid Hasan. Considering the material conditions of the newspaper’s productions is important because it allows us to conceive of a space where print capitalism is coherent with, even acting in service of, religious identity alongside national identity.
Megan Eaton Robb is an Associate Professor in Religious Studies. She teaches courses on South Asian Religions and Gender/Embodiment in Religion, including "Islam, Gender, and Colonialism," “Media and Religion in South Asia,” “Gender, Sexuality, and Religion,” “Religion and Sports,” “History of Print in South Asia,” and “History of Islam in South Asia.” She is a historian of Islam, print, and gender in South Asia. She presses on issues that illuminate the religious identity of Muslims in the 20th century and adds attention to material texts to studies of Urdu journalism. Her first book Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life was published with Oxford University Press in October 2020. She is currently a Senior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, where she is also a member of the Council and the Programming Committee Chair. She is the Vice President of the South Asia Muslim Studies Association. She is currently working on two book projects: one on an 18th-century Mughal woman who married an East India Company official and another on the historical links between nastaliq calligraphy and the Urdu language.