Walter Hakala

Associate Professor, Director, Asian Studies Program
Office: 315 Clemens Hall
Phone number: (716) 645-3419
E-mail address: walterha@buffalo.edu
Personal web page: http://ubwp.buffalo.edu/southasiaatub

Interests

Literature and languages of North India and Central Asia; lexicography; Mughal and early colonial South Asian history; South Asian Islam and Sufism.

“Lexicography of the languages of South Asia from c. 1750 to the present“ for The Cambridge World History of Lexicography

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.

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.