Arthur F. Thurnau Professor
About
Farina Mir is a historian of colonial and postcolonial South Asia, with a particular interest in the religious, cultural, and social history of late-colonial north India. Her current research is focused on Islam in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century India. She is completing a book, "Genres of Muslim Modernity: Being Muslim in Late-Colonial India, 1858-1947," which examines Urdu-language akhlaq—religious/literary texts on ethics—and how they reveal an important history of Islam and Muslims in South Asia. Grounded in a corpus of Urdu akhlaq texts published between the 1860s and 1940s, the book: casts light on a significant but understudied domain of Muslim ethical thought in colonial India; examines Muslim religious dispositions as revealed through this literature; and is an inquiry into the notion of secular Muslimness and its implications for understanding Muslim experience in modern South Asia.
Her first book, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010) is a study of the Punjabi language and its literature under colonialism (from 1849–1947). Through an analysis of Punjabi qisse, or epic stories/romances, Mir locates a Punjabi literary formation in colonial Punjab—and its resonances in contemporary postcolonial India, Pakistan, and in the Punjabi diaspora. By examining the social history of this formation and the themes that it engaged with, The Social Space of Language reassesses late-colonial Punjab’s history away from standard narratives of communal antagonism and violence to examine the moorings of a regional culture that emphasized the importance of locality, a commitment to shared forms of piety, and gender relations that contest patriarchy. The book was awarded the 2011 John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History from the American Historical Association and the 2012 Bernard Cohn Prize from the Association of Asian Studies. Mir discussed the book on a podcast, available here.
Mir teaches a range of courses at the University of Michigan. These include a co-taught introductory course on the discipline of History, “History 101: What is History?” Mir co-authored a short piece (with Paulina Alberto) on why a 101 course is atypical for History departments while normative for other social science disciplines and speaks to its value for History curricula. And a humanities core course for the LSA Honors Program: "Writing Violence: History, Literature, and Film." Her South Asian history offerings include undergraduate survey courses on “The History of Modern India and Pakistan,” “The History of Islam in South Asia,” and an undergraduate seminar on the Partition of India. She also regularly teaches a graduate colloquium entitled “Islam in Motion,” on histories of Islam in the Indian Subcontinent. Mir is the recipient of three awards from the College of LSA for her undergraduate teaching (Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award, Excellence in Education Award, and the Matthews Undergraduate Teaching Award), and the John H. D’Arms Faculty Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities from the Rackham Graduate School.
On leave in 2024-2025 with the support of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mir's scholarship has also been supported by a Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, the Social Science Research Council, the Whiting Foundation, and the American Historical Association, among others, and fellowships at the Society for the Humanities (Cornell University) and the Institute for the Humanities (University of Michigan).
Mir has served as Director of Graduate Studies (2020-2022) and Associate Director of Graduate Studies (2019-2020) in the History Department, and two terms as Director of the Center for South Asian Studies (2012-2018) at U-M’s International Institute.
She has also served three-year terms on the Council of the American Historical Association (Research Division) and on the South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.
Selected Essays:
"Introduction to the Forum: Muslim Modernity in South Asia.” Modern Asian Studies 58, 2 (March 2024): 1–5. doi:10.1017/S0026749X24000167.
“Language Policy and Transformations in India’s Epistemological Terrain,” in “In and Out of Persian, with Sumit Guha, Nile Green, Michael Fisher, Farina Mir, and Christine Philliou.” Comparative Studies in Society and History Forum, “Under the Rubric.” https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2024/05/01/in-and-out-of-persian-with-sumit-guha-nile-green-michael-fisher-farina-mir-and-christine-philliou/
"Urdu Ethics Literature and the Diversity of Muslim Thought in Colonial India," The American Historical Review 127, 3 (September 2022): 1162–1189. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhac219
"Innovation in Punjabi Literature: Considerations on the Advent of Literary Modernity," in Bhai Vir Singh (1872–1957): Religious and Literary Modernities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Indian Punjab, eds. Anshu Malhotra and Anne Murphy (London: Routledge, 2023), 25-46.
"Urdu Ethics Literature in Colonial India: Akhlāq in the Vernacular," in Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies, eds. David Powers and Eric Tagliacozzo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2023).
"Genre and Devotion in Punjab's Popular Narratives: Rethinking Cultural and Religious Syncretism," Comparative Studies in Society and History 48.3, July, 2006: 727-758. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417506000284
"Imperial Policy, Provincial Practices: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-century India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 43, 4 (December 2006): 395–427.
Books:
The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
Punjab Reconsidered: History, Culture, and Practice, ed. Anshu Malhotra and Farina Mir. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Affiliation(s)
- LSA Honors Program
- Program in Anthropology and History
- Center for South Asian Studies
- Global Islamic Studies Center
Field(s) of Study
- Modern South Asia
- Islam/Muslims in South Asia
- British colonialism
