Most of my usual conversation (passing/commenting on links) has moved to twitter, so doing a sunday link post seems almost, well, retro.

Still, things I do for you, gentle readers, will always be en vogue. Because that is how awesome you are. Each and every single one of you.

  • Drake Bennett’s Changing History, Boston Globe, Feb 7 2009, puts forth what our new approaches are going to look like: enviormental, pacific, archeoscience, and neurohistory. Without taking away the merit of Mr. Bennett’s piece, it is clear he is no historian. Still, worth your thoughts.
  • A couple of posts from the NYRB blog (really, you should just read it regularly): Malise Ruthven on French Talibans and Max Rodenbeck on Jaipur Literary Festival. Our friend William Dalrymple is a man of many victories.
  • A history of Tamil cinema from The Hindu.
  • Staying in Hindoostan – the Big Picture showed some amazing photos of Republic Day 2010. I think the pink motorcycle crew deserve a beer.
  • This Ethan Bronner controversy is silly. NYT is not “objective” when it comes to Israel/Palestine issues, Middle East or the global South in general. Let the man’s son do whatever he wants to do. What difference does it make to us?
  • David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s site is awesome. Start here.
  • Zunguzungu, Things You Can Do With An Umbrella. Ella, ella, ella, eh.
  • I have been thinking what the Pakistani equivalent of the Gandhi Rupee would be.
  • “…I suddenly realized that I knew the luminance of the moon – 250 c/ft2. Using the Exposure Formula, I placed this luminance on Zone VII; 60 c/ft2 therefore fell on Zone V, and the exposure with the filter factor o 3x was about 1 second at f/32 with ASA 64 film.” Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.

{ 2 comments }

Academic Publishing

by sepoy on February 6, 2010

in univerCity

Dear Dr. Lapata

In an effort to speed up the publication schedule and work through our backlog, we are attempting to collect any remaining permissions from authors who are moving up in line for publication. Our records indicate that we still require permissions for the image(s) contained in your article, “(redacted).” Please return these permissions as quickly as possible or update us as to the status of your attempts to obtain these permissions. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

Thank you for your interest in The Journal of X, and congratulations again on the acceptance of your essay for publication.

Best regards,
The Journal of X

——

Dear [The Journal of X],

Thank you so much for your note. I was very grateful when you accepted my article for publication in your journal seven (7) years ago. Since that time, approximately five (5) years ago, you forgot that you had accepted the article and re-sent it through your review process, after which you sent me a rejection letter based on the insane rants of an inflamed tea-partier (anachronistic, I know, but it gives you an idea of what I mean). After I brought this imbalanced review to your attention, you rescinded your rejection and re-accepted the article for publication. A year later you sent me a letter similar to the one above. Since I had several years before supplied all the permissions, I grew tired of our little back and forth, stimulating though it had become, and rescinded my acceptance of your re-proferred acceptance. Soon after, I also lost the article in a devastating hard drive crash, and subsequently quit my academic career. Since I no longer had a stake in feverishly publishing my feeble pensées in poorly-run academic journals, I thought no more of the matter, until today.

Best wishes to you and the entire Journal of X family,

Lapata

Seriously.

{ 7 comments }

Reading Tea Leaves in Pakistan

by sepoy on February 2, 2010

in homistan

Last week I gave a small talk to a group of Model UN students at Hildesheim U. Thought I’d archive the presentation – and share it here. Not much going on. My main concern was to show the difference between internal and external public/policy debates*. And maybe also to step away from (inter)national narratives. I didn’t have any pre-written remarks so, you can play karaoke with the slides and just imagine what I said. I am sure long-time readers (and frequent callers) will have no problem. I am a broken record.

*The Kerry slide was a complete dud. I need local political quotes.

{ 1 comment }

Thousands of Years

by sepoy on February 1, 2010

in homistan, univerCity

Doing some research, I came across an official Pakistan government publication celebrating the 5 year anniversary of its existence. I scanned a few of the adverts in the issue. The paper I am writing concerns the “long history” of Pakistan such that allowed Mortimer Wheeler’s Five Thousand Years of Pakistan: An Archaeological Outline (1950) to become a standard account of pre-Partition “Pakistan”. Here, the ads themselves speak towards the need to assert the primacy of the Pakistani history.

ad1

Here are some other, random, images. Enjoy!

ad4

ad6

ad3

ad2

ad5

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Mirza Ghalib

by sepoy on January 30, 2010

in homistan

With thanks to Francesca Orsini, Alok Rai and his family, and Fran Pritchett, we have a scan of the only photo portrait of Mirza Asadullah Ghalib. Incredible.

{ 12 comments }

imperial watch

On Worldview

January 27, 2010

I am slowly cooking some posts – in the meantime, I discussed Pakistan/US on Worldview yesterday. Have a listen, why doncha?

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univerCity

French Tales

January 19, 2010

Le Roi de Lahore (1877) was the second opera written by Jules Massenet (1842-1912). The tale depicts the romance of the King Alim and the temple girl Sita against the backdrop of Mahmoud Ghazni’s invasion of Lahore.1

Théodore Pavie (1811-1896) the French traveller and writer of exotica for Revue des Deux Mondes studied Sanskrit in Paris, [...]

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univerCity

Simon Digby, Historian

January 13, 2010

Via Naim Sahib comes the sad news that Simon Digby, 79, passed away in Delhi. Anyone who has touched any scholarly/popular work on medieval to colonial India – esp. aspects of religion and art – has seen the fruits of his amazing intellect reflected in those works.
I will try and find a full biography [...]

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imperial watch

A Message from Kathy Kelly

January 11, 2010

Speaking Truth to Power by Kathy Kelly
January 8, 2010
There’s a phrase originating with the peace activism of the American Quaker movement: “Speak Truth to Power.” One can hardly speak more directly to power than addressing the Presidential Administration of the United States. This past October, students at Islamabad’s Islamic International University had a message [...]

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imperial watch

`Critical Foreign Language’

January 4, 2010

And a bit behind the curve: S. 1010: National Foreign Language Coordination Act of 2009

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talkies

Obligatory Avatar Post

January 3, 2010

But the problem with my analysis is, you will say, that Cameron is not the Department of State or Labor nor is he the official mouthpiece of some quasi-empire. You would be right. Yet Avatar is consensus. It is the consensus of nearly $300 million dollars – pored over every lovingly rendered pixel flesh and [...]

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holydays

Oh, End It Already

December 22, 2009

Gentle Readers,
I wish you all a best of 2010. Posting will be sparse for a little while but I hope to pick it up in the new year with tons of exciting insight into celebrity lives.
yours,
sepoy.

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noted

More Failures

December 11, 2009

My friend Atiya Khan has a piece in The Platypus Review, The poverty of Pakistan’s politics (PPP), in which she takes me and Faisal Devji (finally, together!) to task for making “concessions to the Right” by not understanding, or not conceptualizing, or not realizing the “crypto-fascism” of the Taliban. This, accordingly, corresponds to the death [...]

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homistan

Once More With Feelings

December 8, 2009

“Yet the Army leadership is refusing to strike at the heart of the Taliban command in Baluchistan Province.” declares another editorial from NYT today. If only these Pakistanis would realize – why won’t they just realize – that this is their wars, not ours.
Think back to March 2009. Then, the Taliban were on a [...]

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holydays

The Sunday Paradigm

December 6, 2009

Sundays in Berlin are quiet affairs. The usual shops are all closed – groceries, pharmacies, booksellers, fruit vendors, bike shops, bakeries, discount stores. You get the picture. In some U-bahn stations, in some busy corners, there would be a lone bakery, a hold-out grocer. New Berliners, such as myself, collect these informational nugget, [...]

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imperial watch

The Seth Jones Experience

December 4, 2009

Seth G. Jones, the author of “In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan,” is a civilian adviser to the American military.
One of the brains behind President Obama’s Afghanistan policy Seth G. Jones, of RAND & McCrystal has a particularly unhinged op-ed in today’s NYT: Take the War to Pakistan.
The United States [...]

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not baseball

Imran Khan, Considered

December 4, 2009

In The Review, I have a review of Christopher Sanford’s Imran Khan in which I briefly consider the man. Below is what didn’t make it into the review – for fairly obvious reasons – but, I thought I’d spin it here. No pun.
Much has been written on Imran Khan’s transcendence from the game of [...]

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imperial watch

The War Must Go On

December 2, 2009

The safe havens must be eliminated. The corruption must be stopped. The infrastructures must be built. The people must be free. The allies must stand together. The nuclear arms must remain safe. The bombing must be stopped. The safe haven must be eliminated.
30,000 plus a exit date of June 2011. It’s a safe [...]

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imperial watch

From Minaret to Steeple

November 30, 2009

Why is the knowledge of history always the first casualty?
Richard J. H. Gottheil. “The Origin and History of the Minaret”. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Mar., 1910): 152-4.
It is a well-known fact that the early Christian basilica had no towers attached or superposed. The same is true of the [...]

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imperial watch

Swiss Holes

November 29, 2009

I wonder what the world would be saying if this game had the bearded fella sporting peyots along with that sporty ’stache. But since Muslims are the new (old) Jews, this sort of pure islamophobia will skip by without comment from the cognoscenti.

Lest you think this is more generalized immigration phobia and not religiously [...]

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