Aparna Kapadia

Associate Professor of History

[email protected]
413-597-4966
Hollander Hall Rm 253

Fall 2019 Class Hours

Mon/Thu – 2:35 pm to 3:50 pm
Tue/Thu – 11:20 am to 12:35 pm

Fall 2019 Office Hours

Tue – 1:45 pm to 3:45 pm

Education

B.A. St. Xavier's College, Mumbai University (1998)
M.A. Jawaharlal Nehru University (2001)
M.Phil. Jawaharlal Nehru University, History (2005)
Ph.D. University of London, History (2010)

Courses

Note: courses in gray are not offered this academic year.

HIST 117 / ASST 117 / GBST 117(S)

Bombay/Mumbai: Making of a Modern Metropolis

HIST 220 / ASST 222(S)

History and Society in India and South Asia: c. 2000 to 1700s CE

HIST 221 / ASST 221 / GBST 221(F)

The Making of Modern South Asia: 1750-1950 CE

HIST 312 / ASST 312 / GBST 312 / REL 312

The Mughal Empire: Power, Art, and Religion in India

HIST 314 / ARTH 314 / ASST 314(F)

Emperors of Heaven and Earth: Mughal Power and Art in India, 1525-1707

HIST 391 / ASST 391 / GBST 391

When India was the World: Trade, Travel and History in the Indian Ocean

HIST 488 T / REL 388 / ASST 488 / GBST 488

Gandhi: Nationalism, Philosophy, and Legacy

Current Committees

  • Faculty Interview Panel
  • Faculty Steering Committee

Biography

Aparna Kapadia is a historian of South Asia. Her research interests include the cultural and literary history of pre-modern and modern South Asia, Indian regional traditions, and the Indian Ocean. She is the author of In Praise of Kings: Rajputs, Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and co-editor of The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text (Orient Blackswan, 2010). Aparna also writes a monthly column on history called Off Centre for Scroll.in.

Aparna has an undergraduate degree in history from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai and MA and MPhil degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London subsequently held a Mellon Post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford until 2011. She was Assistant Professor of History at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) before coming to Williams College in 2013.

Selected Publications

Kapadia, Aparna, In Praise of Kings: Rajputs, Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Kapadia, Aparna, ‘Universal Poet, Local Kings: Sanskrit, the Rhetoric of Kingship and Local Kingdoms in Gujarat’ in Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh (eds), After Timur Left: Multiple Spaces of Cultural Production and Circulation in Fifteenth-century North India, OUP, New Delhi, 2014.

Kapadia, Aparna, ‘The Last Cakravartin?: The Gujarat Sultan as ‘Universal King’ in Fifteenth Century Sanskrit Poetry’, Medieval History Journal, vol. 16, no. 1 (April 2013):63-88.

Kapadia, Aparna, ‘Alexander Forbes and the Making of a Regional History,’ in Edward Simpson and Aparna Kapadia (eds), The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2010.

Simpson, Edward and Aparna Kapadia (eds), The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2010.

Kapadia, Aparna, ‘What Makes the Head Turn: The Narratives of Kānhaḍade and the Dynamics of Legitimacy in Western India’, SAGAR, vol. 18, Spring 2008, pp. 87-100.

Research Interests

South Asian history, literary and popular culture, Indian Ocean history,  history of food and culinary practices.

Theses Advised

Benjamin Nathan ’15 – The Administrative Strategy of Thomas Stamford Raffles in Java 1811-1816