Monograph
2018
Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press.
About two hundred kilometers west of the city of Karachi, in the desert of Baluchistan, Pakistan, sits the shrine of the Hindu Goddess Hinglaj. Despite the temple's ancient Hindu and Muslim history, an annual festival at Hinglaj has only been established within the last three decades, in part because of the construction of the Makran Coastal Highway, which connects the distant rural shrine with urban Pakistan. Now, an increasingly confident minority Hindu community has claimed Hinglaj as their main religious center, a site for undisturbed religious performance and expression.
2019 Interview on the book Hinglaj Devi with the Pakistani channel Samaa TV (in Urdu language)
2021 Conversation on the book Hinglaj Devi at the Lahore Literary Festival
2022 Discussion on Hinglaj and other Goddess shrines at Doorway to Sindh
Edited Volumes and Special Issues
2020
Pakistan. Parallel Narratives of the Nation-State, eds. Jürgen Schaflechner & Christina Oesterheld. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
This edited volume combines academic and journalistic writings on Pakistans literature, non-Muslim life-worlds, and popular culture. The book brings together national and international authors from fields of literary studies, anthropology, and cultural studies to critique solidified imaginings of the nation state.
2019
Ritual Journeys, eds. Christoph Bergmann & Jürgen Schaflechner. London: Routledge.
This book focuses on the ritualized forms of mobility that constitute phenomena of pilgrimage in South Asia and establishes a new analytical framework for the study of ritual journeys.
The book advances the conceptual scope of ‘classical’ Pilgrimage Studies and provides empirical depth through individual case studies. A key concern is the strategies of ritualization through which actors create, assemble and (re-)articulate certain modes of displacement to differentiate themselves from everyday forms of locomotion. Ritual journeys are understood as being both productive of and produced by South Asia’s socio-economically uneven, politically charged and culturally variegated landscapes
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
2022
“Affectivism and visibility in the mediatization of disappeared women in Pakistan” Affective Societies, eds. Margret Lünenborg and Birgit Röttger-Rössler. London: Routledge.
“The Karachi Jews and the history of Pakistani antisemitism” Contemporary South Asia. 1-16.
“Introduction” (with Max Kramer) Dastavezi The Audio-Visual South Asia. (4): 4-7.
2021
“Film, Photo, and Text: Relation–Making, Intensive Genres, and Realism” (with Max Kramer) In Dastavezi The Audio-Visual South Asia. (3). 4–14.
“Krav Maga: History, representation, and globalization of a self-defense system from Israel”. In Martial Arts Studies. (11). 110-121
“A specter is hunting Pakistan! Nationalism in Pakistan’s horror pulp fiction” In Asian Ethnology (80) 1. 31-56.
2020
“Hinglaj Devi ‘solidifying’ Hindu identity at a Hindu temple in Pakistan.” In American Anthropologist. 122 (1). 528-539
“Thrust into Heaven: Ambiguity and degradation in multi-mediated ethnographic research” In Dastavezi The Audio-Visual South Asia. (2). 24–35.
“Relation-making, time, and critique: A Slow Theory approach to film and social sciences” (with Max Kramer) In Dastavezi The Audio-Visual South Asia. (2). 1–12.
“Introduction” in Pakistan. Parallel Narratives of the Nation-State, eds. Christina Oesterheld & Jürgen Schaflechner. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
“Blasphemy accusations as extreme speech acts in Pakistan” in Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech. eds. Udupa, Sahana, Iginio Gagliardone and Peter Hervik. Indiana University Press.
“Betwixt and between: Hindu identity in Pakistan and ‘wary and aware’ public performances” In Journal of South Asian Studies (43) 1. 152-168.
2019 Interview on the research covered in the article “Betwixt and between” with the Pakistani channel Samaa TV (in Urdu language)
2019
“Blasphemy and the appropriation of vigilante justice in ‘hagiohistoric’ writing in Pakistan” in Outrage: The Rise of Religious Offence in South Asia, eds. Kathinka Frøystad, Paul Rollier, and Arild Engelsen Ruud. London: UCL Press.
“Introduction: ritual journeys in South Asia” (with Christoph Bergmann) in Ritual Journeys, eds. Christoph Bergmann & Jürgen Schaflechner. London: Routledge.
“Hinduism in Pakistan” in Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism. Ed. Tracy Coleman. New York: Oxford University Press.
“Moving slowly between documentary and dastavezi” (with Max Kramer) In Dastavezi a Journal for Audio-Visual South Asia Studies (1). 1-11.
2018
“Forced conversions’ of Hindu women to Islam in Pakistan: another perspective” in The Conversation.
“Forced conversion and (Hindu) women’s agency in Sindh” in South Asia Chronicle 7. 275-317.
2017
“Why does Pakistan’s horror pulp fiction stereotype ‘the Hindu’” in The Conversation.
2016
“What is lacking in the law on forced conversion” in The Herald, December issue. Karachi.
“The Hindu’ in recent Urdu horror stories from Pakistan” in Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien. Band 32. 323-235.
2017 interview with Pervez Hoodbhoy on the research “The Hindu” in Urdu horror stories from Pakistan (in Urdu language)
2015
“The mother and the other” in Muslim Wanderers in South Asia, eds. Michel Boivin & Remy Delage. London: Routledge.
“Denial and repetition: the solidification of tradition” in The Ambivalence of Denial. What’s Behind Denying Ritual?, eds. Ute Hüsken & Udo Simon. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
“Royal Asiatic Society” in Lexikon zur Überseegeschichte, ed. Hermann Hiery. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
“Hinduism” (with Hans Hommes) in Lexikon zur Überseegeschichte, ed. Hermann Hiery. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
“Economy of sacrifice: The Vagris of Karachi” in The Karachi Conference, ed. Sabiah Askari. Karachi: Cambridge Scholars Publishers.
2014
“The shrine of Hinglaj Devi” in The Herald, October issue. Karachi.
Encyclopedia Articles
2021
“How do Hindus live in Muslim countries like Pakistan, if any do?” in Hinduism in Five Minutes, ed. Steven Ramey. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publisher.
“Is Hinduism a more peaceful religion?” in Hinduism in Five Minutes, ed. Steven Ramey. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publisher.
“Hinduism in Pakistan” in Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism. Ed. Tracy Coleman. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reviews
2020
“Max Kramer: Mobilität und Zeugenschaft: Unabhängige Dokumentarfilmpraktiken und der Kaschmirkonflikt“ in Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research (45) 1.
2018
“Matthew Cook: Annexation and the unhappy valley. The historical anthropology of Sindh’s colonialization” in Intinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction. (42) 3.
Newspapers, Blogs, and Online Publications
2018
“‘Forced conversions’ of Hindu women to Islam in Pakistan: another perspective” in The Conversation.
2017
“Why does Pakistan’s horror pulp fiction stereotype ‘the Hindu’” in The Conversation.
2016
“What is lacking in the law on forced conversion” The Herald, December issue. Karachi.
2014
“The shrine of Hinglaj Devi” The Herald, October issue. Karachi.
