Aparna Vaidik

Aparna Vaidik is an Associate Professor of History at Ashoka University. She formerly taught at Georgetown University, USA, offering courses such as Nation and Nationalism, Indian Ocean in Age of Empire, The Politics of Violence, Gandhi and World History and Colonialism and Culture. She also served on the comprehensive exam and dissertation committee of several graduate students. Professor Vaidik taught at the University of Delhi for five years, during and after her Ph.D., teaching subjects ranging from Classical Antiquity, the Russian Revolution to the History of Modern China and Japan.

A list of her books include:

• Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter and Island History, Palgrave Macmillan,Cambridge Imperial and Postcolonial Studies Series, 2010

• My Son’s Inheritance: A Secret History of Blood Justice and Lynchings in India, Aleph, 2019.

• Awaiting Swaraj: Ascetic Imagination and Revolutionaries in Dialogue (under review)

• Revolutionaries on Trial: HSRA and History of Lahore Conspiracy Case Trial (near completion)

A list of her publications include

• ‘Rewriting World History in the Classroom: Pedagogical Dispatches from India', Journal of Asian World History (co-authored with Gwen Kelly). 2019.

• ‘Renaming, Erasing’, Indian Express, 9 January 2019

• ‘Lost Political Narratives: What Earns Swami Agnivesh the Ire of Powers That Be’, Business Standard, 24 July 2018.

• ‘A Nation Betrayed’ in Times of India', 25 February 2016.

• “Hindu Selfhood and Cow Stories.” The Indian Express, October 9, 2015.

• “The majoritarian victims: The history of lynching black Americans as a parable of our times.” Scroll.in, December 28, 2018.

• “History of a renegade revolutionary: revolution and betrayal in British India.” Routledge, September 16, 2013.

• “Working an Island Colony: Convict Labour Regime in Colonial Andamans.” Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2010.

• “Settling the Convict: Matrimony and Domesticity in the Andamans.” SAGE Publications, August 1, 2006.

• “Crime and Punishment.” Oxford University Press, May-June, 2001.

• “Rituals of Preservation.” Oxford University Press, September-October, 2001.

• “Outing the sexual taboo.” Oxford University Press, May-June, 2000.

• “Confessions of a Rajput.” Oxford University Press, July-August, 2001.

• “Older than the city.” Oxford University Press, July-August, 2000.

• “Studies in History.” SAGE Publications, 2000.

• “Making History, Drawing Territory: British Mapping in India, c. 1756–1905.” Indian Historical Review 31, no. 1–2 (January 2004): 263–67. doi:10.1177/037698360403100220.

A list of her book reviews include

• Clare Anderson et al, New Histories of the Andaman Islands in American Historical Review, Vol. 123, No.4, 2018, pp.1300-1301

• Sunil Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal, in American Historical Review, Vol. 119, No.5., 2014, pp.1660-1661.

• Clare Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean, in Studies in History, 2004.

• Ian J. Barrow, Making History, Drawing Territory, in Indian Historical Review, 2004.

• Partha Chatterjee (ed.), History and Present, in Seminar, a special issue on Rewriting History, 2003.

• Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker (ed.), Hinduism and Ecology in Biblio, A Review of Books, 2001.

• Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne H. Rudolph (ed.), Reversing the Gaze in Biblio, A Review of Books, 2001.

• Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment in Biblio, A Review of Books, 2001.

• Shobita Punja, Divine Ecstasy, in Biblio, A Review of Books, 2000.

• Upinder Singh, Ancient Delhi in Biblio, A Review of Books, 2000.

A list of her research articles in edited volumes are:

• ‘Dis-ordering Global Histories: Spatio-Temporal Scales of Historical Writing’ in Suchandra Ghosh and Rila Mukherjee (ed.), Title TBA, Asiatic Society of India, Kolkata. (Forthcoming).

• ‘The Island Metaphor and Historiographical Warp: Writing Pre-modern History of the Andamans’, in Kenneth Hall (ed.),Mobility and Circulation in the Eastern Indian Ocean, Primus Books. (Forthcoming).

• ‘Was Bhagat Singh an ‘Internationalist’? Resistance and Identity in Global Age’, in Vivek Sachdeva (ed.), Identity Assertions and Conflicts in South Asia, Routledge. (Forthcoming).

• ‘History of a Renegade Revolutionary: Revolutionism and Betrayal in Colonial India’, in Revolutionary Lives in South Asia: Acts and Afterlives of Anticolonial Political Action, edited by Kama Maclean and J. Daniel Elam, Routledge, UK [Reprint], 2014

• ‘The Wild Andamans: Island Imageries and Colonial Encounter’ in Deepak Kumar et al,Nature and the Orient, Vol. II, Oxford University Press, 2010.

• ‘Working an Island Colony: Convict Labour Regime in the Colonial Andamans(1858-1921)’, in Marcel ven der Linden (ed.), Towards Global Labour History, Tulika,2009.

• ‘Sazaa-i-Kalapani’ in M.P. Singh and Rekha Awasthi, eds., 1857: Bagawat Ke Daur ka Itihas, Granth Shilpi[in Hindi], 2009.

Picture Courtesy: Aparna Vaidik's Personal Collection