Megan Eaton Robb is the Julie and Martin Franklin Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Robb holds a D.Phil from the University of Oxford, an M.Phil from the University of Oxford, and a BA from Indiana University, Bloomington, where she was a Wells Scholar. Her first book, Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life 1900-1947 was published with Oxford University Press in 2020. She has also co-edited the book Muslims Against the Muslim League: Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan with Ali Usman Qasmi. She is working on a project entitled "Unstable Archives" which will culminate in a digital archive of primary sources related to lives of women straddling cultures in colonial India. She is a Senior Fellow in the Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography. She recently held the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in South Asian Islam at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is currently on sabbatical from teaching, doing research in India and Pakistan in the Fall of 2023.
Research & Teaching Interests
History of Islam in South Asia
Urdu/Hindi Publics
Modernity and Print
Gender and Religion in the Colonial Period
19th and 20th Century Reformist Movements
Becoming Elizabeth: The Transformation of a Bihari Mughal into an English Lady, 1758-1822
This book project focuses on the life of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa Ducarel, a woman who cohabitated and bore children with an East India Company official before converting to Christianity, moving to England, and adapting to British life. The first article on Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa’s archive has been published with the American Historical Review. The digital exhibit of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa’s life and times is available at this website.
Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa Ducarel, c. 1790
Oxford University Press release October 2020
Print & the Urdu Public:
Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life in Colonial India
Muslims Against the Muslim League:
Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan
The popularity of the Muslim League and its idea of Pakistan has been measured in terms of its success in achieving the goal of a sovereign state in the Muslim majority regions of North West and North East India. It led to an oversight of Muslim leaders and organizations which were opposed to this demand, predicating their opposition to the League on its understanding of the history and ideological content of the Muslim nation. This volume takes stock of multiple narratives about Muslim identity formation in the context of debates about partition, historicizes those narratives, and reads them in the light of the larger political milieu of the period. Focusing on the critiques of the Muslim League, its concept of the Muslim nation, and the political settlement demanded on its behalf, it studies how the movement for Pakistan inspired a contentious, influential conversation on the definition of the Muslim nation. Read Reviews
Special Issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
Feeling Modern: The History of Emotions in Urban Soutn Asia
Events
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