Mana Kia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Her interests include the connected social, cultural, intellectual histories of West, Central, and South Asia from the 17th – 19th centuries. Her first book, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin before Nationalism (Stanford, 2020) explores how premodern conceptions of place and origins provided expansive possibilities of Persian selfhood. She is working on a second book, whichoutlines how a shared sense of aesthetic and ethical form (adab as culture) was socially and politically enacted in the transregional circulation of people, texts, practices, and ideas between Iran and Hindustan.
Paper Title: The Gift of Companionship: Homo Amicus and the Work of Persian Texts (Panel 2, 2C)