Anubha Anushree

I am an advanced graduate student interested in the history and politics modern South Asia. My research and teaching draws on sources in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and English to situate South Asia within a global intellectual and historical context. My research examines South Asia through the specific prism of public morality. My dissertation is a longue durée assessment of corruption in the nineteenth and twentieth century India, highlighting how it has been mobilized to make claims for moral authority and purification. Exploring the imperial and the independent state of India through episodes of dysfunction and misconduct, my dissertation covers critical moments in South Asia.

In situating corruption within a wider temporal and geographic frame, my work challenges the traditional identification of the subcontinent as backward and corrupt and recognizes the tensions that underline the region’s patchy but remarkable democratic journey. Further, my research also contributes to the study of the moral and the political forms in the non-west, a theme of abiding interest to me. 

Prior to my graduate studies, I taught English literature at the University of Delhi. At Stanford, I have taught courses on the intellectual history of modern India, the global history of political thought and non-violence, Islam in the subcontinent as well as Geospatial Humanities. My study has been supported by several generous awards and scholarships such as the Stanford Humanities Center and the Steven Wisch Prize.