Yasmin Saikia

Associate Professor M.A. Aligarh Muslim University, India, 1987 M.A. University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1993 Ph.D., University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1999

Research Interests

Professor Saikia's research and teaching interests are broadly focused on South Asia. She approaches South Asia as a "crossroads" of many cultures and histories. Specifically, she is interested in understanding the dynamic intersections, such as the importance and uses of the past in the present, the gaps and connections between memory and history, contestations and accommodations between local, national and religious identities, particularly the Muslim question in India, and the discourse of nonviolence along side the practice of violence against women and vulnerable groups.

In her first two books, In the Meadows of Gold: Telling Tales of the Swargadeos at the Crossroads of Assam (1997) and Fragmented Memories: Struggling to Become Tai-Ahom in India (2004) she examined the connections between Assam and South-East Asia, particularly Thailand, through a study of pre-modern local chronicles called buranjis of the Ahom kingdom and colonial and post-colonial records, including scholarly and militant networks. In these two books, she shows how the revived memories of the thirteenth century serve as a site in present-day Assam for crafting a new Tai-Ahom cultural and political identity that questions the Indian national identity and, in turn, generates linkages with pan-Tai identity movements.  

Her current work is on Muslim histories and identities in the subcontinent. Based on a three-year oral history project focusing on the Bangladesh war of 1971, she has recently completed a book manuscript entitled “They were Human, too”: Women from Bangladesh Remember the War of 1971(forthcoming 2010) in which she examines how women experienced post-colonial nation building, and tell in fractured narratives a story of violence that is hidden in the official histories of South Asia. Her current book project is a study of Muslim history and politics in the 19th and 20th c. leading to the making and subsequent unmaking of Pakistan in 1971. Combining oral interviews with archival research in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, she privileges the enduring language of insāniyat/humanity that enables the divided Muslim communities in the subcontinent to make sense of their identity beyond the violence of nation-building, state and religion.

 View a web version of Professor Saikia's curriculum vitae (in PDF)

Courses Offered (as Schedules Allow)

For current course listings, consult the Directory of Classes.

• Hist 490: Muslim Identities in South Asia: Colonial and Postcolonial Imaginations
• Hist 393: Gandhi, Non-Violence and Indian Nationalism
• Hist 100: Gender, State, and Violence
• Hist 135: South Asian History to 1750
• Hist 136: South Asian History since 1750
• Hist 18: World Since 1945
• Hist 90: India Constructed/Contested
• Hist 90: Intimate Histories: Women and Partition in 1947 and 1971
• Hist 46H: Communalism and Nationalism: Histories of Hindus and Muslims in South Asia
• Hist 890: Gender in Asia
• Hist 890: Introduction to Asian History
• Hist490:  Musim Histories and Identities in South and Southeast Asia (7th -20th  C)

Professor Saikia is planning a new course on the History of Pakistan to be offered in the next academic year (2010-2011).

Contact

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Department of History

CB #3195, Hamilton Hall

Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195