Walter Hakala
Interests
Literature and languages of North India and Central Asia; lexicography; Mughal and early colonial South Asian history; South Asian Islam, Sufism and epigraphy
Contact Information
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Works in Progress
- “Vernacular Literacy and the Urdu Public Text,” a book-length study of the Urdu language through inscriptions, and other non-paper sources
- “Two New Kinds of Fire: Syphilis and Capsicum in Early Hindvi Vocabularies,” forthcoming in Objects, Images, Stories: Simon Digby’s Historical Method, edited by Francesca Orsini
- “Steingass’s Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary and the Rise and Fall of Persian as a Transregional Language,” forthcoming in The Whole World in a Book: Dictionaries in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Sarah Ogilvie and Gabriella Safran (Oxford University Press).
- (with Lisa Mitchell) “The Lexicography of the Languages of South Asia from c. 1750 to Present,” forthcoming in The Cambridge World History of Lexicography, edited by John Considine
Selected Publications
- “Lexicography, Urdu,”, in Encyclopædia of Islam, THREE, edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson, Leiden: Brill, 2020.
- “Precarity and Professionalism: Steingass’s Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (1892),” In Nineteenth-Century Lexicography: Between Science and Fiction, edited by Sarah Ogilvie and Gabriella Safran, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, pages 236-254.
- Hakala, Walter and Lisa Mitchell, “The Lexicography of the Languages of South Asia from c. 1750 to Present,” The Cambridge World History of Lexicography, edited by John Considine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019): 388-413.
- “Review of Sunil Sharma, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court (Harvard University Press, 2017),” Journal of Early Modern History 23, no. 6 (2019), pages 574-577.
- “Review of Jeff Roy, Mohammed to Maya,” Asian Ethnology 76, no. 1 (2017): 145-47.
- “Ajay Čand-nāma,” in Perso-Indica. An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions, edited by Fabrizio Speziale and Carl W. Ernst (2018).
- Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016; New Delhi: Primus Books, 2017. Awarded the Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies, 2015.
- “From Sepoy to Film Star: Indian Interpreters of an Afghan Mythic Space,” Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 5 (2016): 1501-1546.
- “The Authorial Problem in the _Khāliq Bārī_ of ‘Khusrau’.” Indian Economic & Social History Review 51, no. 4 (2014):481-96.
- “A Sultan in the Realm of Passion: Coffee in Eighteenth-Century Delhi.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 4 (2014), pages 371-88.
- A Masnavi in Praise of Coffee: [Prepared] at the bidding of Nawab ‘Umdat Al-Mulk Amir Khan Bahadur by Shah Hatim (1699-1783).” Translated with M.A. Naru. Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 4 (2014), pages 425-27.
- “On Equal Terms: The Equivocal Origins of an Early Mughal Indo-Persian Vocabulary.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Third Series) 25, no. 2 (2015): 209-27.
- "Languages as a Key to Understanding Afghanistan's Cultures." Education About Asia 17, no. 2 (2012), pages 42-46. Republished in 2014 as part of the National Geographic Online Education Collection.
- "Locating ‘Pashto’ in Afghanistan: A Survey of Secondary Sources." Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and its Neighbors, edited by Harold Schiffman, and Brian Spooner, 53-88. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
Awards and Fellowships
- University at Buffalo Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development & Humanities Institute Research Funding in the Arts & Humanities, 2019-2020
- University at Buffalo Baldy Center Research Grant, 2018-2019
- University at Buffalo Experiential Learning Network Faculty Fellow, 2018-2019
- Short-term Senior Fellowship in Iranian Studies, American Institute of Iranian Studies, 2018
- Honorable Mention, Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize, South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, 2018
- UB Exceptional Scholar Award for Young Investigators, 2017
- UB President Emeritus and Mrs. Meyerson Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring, 2017
- The Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies, 2015
- Faculty Fellow, Honors College, 2015-2017
- University at Buffalo Office of the Vice President for Research / Humanities Institute Seed Money in the Arts and Humanities Fund, 2015
- University at Buffalo Office of the Vice President for Research/Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship, fall 2013.