PhD Candidate Hallie Swanson has received research grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) and the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS) to support her ongoing dissertation research. Swanson describes her project as follows:
My dissertation, ‘Moving Stories: The Indo-Persian Romance, 1600-1857’, is an investigation into how a concept of passionate, mad love — called ‘ishq in Arabic, Persian, and Indian languages – became mainstream in precolonial South Asian popular culture. Nowadays associated with Bollywood film songs, ‘ishq in the time period I investigate had an Islamic inflection: this sort of love was seen as a way to access the divine by revealing the divinity inherent in creation. Lovers’ trials and tribulations—from mystical beasts to jealous relatives—were allegories of the Sufi path. I argue that a genre of narrative poem, the ‘ishqi masnavi (romantic poem, often translated as ‘romance’), written by Sufi initiates in a variety of languages, was vital in disseminating this popular concept of love. I show how song, recitation and the use of illustrations served to unite communities of reader- listener-viewers who were instructed in how to use earthly love to access God. Using a combination of literary analysis, historical research, and material-texts methods, my dissertation tells the story of how over two centuries, the romance tradition in several languages (Persian, Dakhni, Urdu and Punjabi) gradually moved out of the Sufi lodge and the court into urban coteries, colonial textbooks, and eventually modern print publics—but the Sufi cosmology that underpinned these stories remained a constant.
Congratulations, Hallie!