KEYNOTE, Keywords Symposium

This keynote talk explores the form of Persianate politics across Central, South, and West Asia. Using 18th century South Asia as a case study, Columbia University scholar Mana Kia considers the social bonds that linked people and collectives of different origins, religions, social status, occupations, and positions of power. These bonds, defined by intimacy, were central to the very possibility of good governance before colonialism. Examining both social ethics and embodied aesthetics, Kia argues that sociability and intimate bonds must be part of any consideration of politics and the state before colonial rule.

Mana Kia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. She is a scholar of the connected histories of early modern Persianate Asia with a focus on the circulation of people, texts, practices, and ideas just before the dominance of modern European colonial power. She is the author of Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin before Nationalism (Stanford, 2020).