UF Department of African and Asian Languages and Literature


	Amy Bard Assistant Professor PhD, Columbia University
	Office: 345 Pugh Hall Phone: 352-273-2951	Office Hours: no Spring 2008 office hours
	E-mail: <amybard@aall.ufl.edu>

I work on literature and language use in both Hindi and Urdu, with particular attention to expressive traditions among women and to forms, including laments, that gained prominence in the nineteenth or early twentieth century and still have vibrant (often religiously based) performance contexts today. Much of my work explores how gender, regional identity, or sectarian tensions mediate poetic production, appreciation, and meaning in contemporary South Asia. I am also interested in the anthropology of emotion/affect. Some of my newer research documents the construction of linguistic identity and heritage in areas within South Asia where speakers of “major” languages form minority communities.

Selected Publications:

“Turning Karbala Inside Out: Humor and Ritual Critique in South Asian Muharram Rites,” in Ritual Levity and Ritual Play in South Asia Eds. Selva Raj and Corinne Dempsey. Albany: SUNY Press, forthcoming.

“‘No Power of Speech Remains’: Tears and Transformation in South Asian Majlis Poetry,” Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination Ed. Kimberly Patton and John Stratton Hawley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

“Value and Vitality in a Literary Tradition: Female Poets and the Urdu Marsiyah,” The Annual of Urdu Studies 15: 323-335, 2000.

Review:
Nets of Awareness by Frances W. Pritchett, Columbia University’s Southern Asian Institute Newsletter 19(2) 1994.

FALL 2005 SYLLABUS
ASN 4905 Section 4012