Megan Eaton Robb is the Julie and Martin Franklin Assistant Professor in Religious Studies. She teaches courses on South Asian Religions and Gender/Embodiment in Religion, including “Media and Religion in South Asia,” “Gender, Sexuality, and Religion,” “Religion and Sports,” “History of Print in South Asia,” and “History of Islam in South Asia.”
She is primarily a historian of Islam in South Asia, and her work overall investigates Islam in South Asia, viewed from the perspective of Urdu print publics. She presses on issues that illuminate the religious identity of Muslims in the 20th century and adds attention to material texts to studies of Urdu journalism. Her first book Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life was published with Oxford University Press in October 2020. The book focuses on how the changing cultural and political climate of colonial India urged Muslims to expand the influence of existing print networks and make them distinctly Muslim. She analyzes this connection from a microstudy of both the discourse and materiality of Madinah newspaper, a paper printed from Bijnor qasbahthat presented itself as a voice for Muslims. A version of a chapter of this book appeared in Contemporary Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in September 2020.
Research Interests: History of Islam in South Asia; Hindi and Urdu Public Spheres; Modernities and Print; Politics and Publics; Gender, Sexuality, and Religion in South Asia and the Diaspora; 19th and 20th Century Reformist Movements in Islam; Religion and Sport
Research Areas: Asian Religions; Childhood, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Islam; Material and Visual Culture; Modernities, Secularism, and Science; Politics and Publics (this list is for prospective graduate students, to determine which research fields in the department Professor Robb supervises)