Cosmopolitan cultures and oceanic thought

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Going below the waterline : hydrocolonial methods, creolized water / Isabel Hofmeyr -- Fellowship and aversion in the South : the challenges of South-South collaboration / Elleke Boehmer -- Found in prison : the poetics of oceanic histories / Geeta Patel -- Remembering the Bengal Delta : ca. 1450-1850 / Rila Mukherjee -- "The wind sketches landscapes of words" : oceanic poetics in the Horn of Africa and western Indian Ocean / Kelsey McFaul -- Padmabati of the oceans : unfreedom and belonging in Syed Alaol's Padmabati / Swati Moitra -- Senses translated : Paṭappāṭṭus in the Indian Ocean, circulation of texts and sounds across Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit cosmopoleis / Ihsan Ul Ihthisam -- Of those on shore : the dhow trade and mobility in the Indian Ocean / Nidhi Mahajan -- Towards an architecture of the Indian Ocean : mapping the syncretic grammar of coastal cities & architecture through Ibn Battuta's water journeys (1342-1347) / Iqtedar Alam -- Through the eyes of the boat people : redefining oceans in the 21st century / Chrisalice Ela Joseph and Vinod Balakrishnan -- Literate illiterates : Arabi-Malayalam and parallel process of knowledge production among Muslims in Kerala / M.H.Ilias. -- 'Ulamā' networks across the seas : understanding the trajectory of Islam in Medieval Malabar / Mohammed Shameem K.K. -- Encountering the 'other : pilgrims at sea and accounts of journeys to Hejaz in the age of oceanic mobility / Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil -- Christianity, conversion and caste : reflecting on identity in Dalit Christian Malayalam writings in post-colonial India / Steven S. George -- Rainbow waters : towards a queer coalition between India and Botswana / Kashish Dua.

"This book imagines the ocean as central to understanding the world and its connections in history, literature and the social sciences. Introducing the central conceptual category of ocean as method, it analyzes the histories of movement and traversing across connected spaces of water and land sedimented in literary texts, folklore, local histories, autobiographies, music and performance. It explores the constant flow of people, material and ideologies across the waters and how they make their presence felt in a cosmopolitan thinking of the connections of the world. Going beyond violent histories of slavery and indenture that generate global connections, it tracks the movements of sailors, boatmen, religious teachers, merchants, and adventurers. The essays in this volume summon up this miscegenated history in which land and water are ever linked. A significant rethinking of world history, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, especially connected history and maritime history, literature, and Global South studies"--