Ulrike Stark, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) and COSAS member, has published a new book and two illustrated essays. 

In 2021, Stark was featured in Contextual Alternate (Vol. 1) for her illustrated essay entitled “Making tracts attractive: missionary print and the small book in nineteenth-century rural India.” The work focuses on the materiality and function of missionary tracts in rural environments during the heyday of Protestant evangelical activity in nineteenth century British India and seeks to understand the role of printed texts in a low-literacy environment. 

Shortly thereafter, Stark’s essay “Calligraphic masterpiece, mass-produced scripture: early Qur’an printing in colonial India,” was published in Manuscript and Print in the Islamic Tradition, ed. by Scott Reese. The book is volume 26 in the series Studies in Manuscript Cultures. Stark’s essay focuses on the understudied history of Islamic printing in South Asia and the coexisting and competing modes of Qur’an printing in nineteenth century colonial India. 

Finally, Stark worked in collaboration with Professor Smita Gandotra of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi who is also an alumna of SALC. The pair published their translated and annotated version of  Gauri Datt’s Devrani Jethani ki Kahani, or A Story of Two Sisters-in-Law earlier this year. The original 1870 work is often considered to be the first novel in Hindi and the Stark and Gandotra translation is the first to translate it into English.  

Congratulations to Professor Ulrike Stark on her extensive achievements and new publications.