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About Samee Siddiqui

I am a PhD Candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying Asian History, focusing on Japanese-South Asian intellectual exchanges between 1905 and the Second World War. In particular, I explore South Asian anticolonial figures engaged in discussions surrounding religion, race, and empire.

Samee Siddiqui is a former journalist who is currently a PhD Candidate at the Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can find him on twitter @ssiddiqui83

NBN Episodes hosted by Samee:

Japanese Studies November 8, 2022

Reading Medieval Ruins

Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan

Morgan Pitelka

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
The Japanese provincial city of Ichijōdani was destroyed in the civil wars of the late sixteenth century but never rebuilt. Archaeological excavations have since uncovered the most detailed late medieval …
South Asian Studies October 12, 2021

Theosophy across Boundaries

Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement

Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement (SUNY Press, 2020) brings a global history approach to the study of esotericism, highlighting the important role of …
South Asian Studies September 14, 2021

Unsettling Utopia

The Making and Unmaking of French India

Jessica Namakkal

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
After India achieved independence from the British in 1947, there remained five scattered territories governed by the French imperial state. It was not until 1962 that France fully relinquished control …
South Asian Studies July 28, 2021

The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600–1750

David Veevers

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
This is an important, revisionist account of the origins of the British Empire in Asia in the early modern period. In The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600-1750 (Cambridge University …
South Asian Studies May 28, 2021

A Revolutionary History of Interwar India

Violence, Image, Voice and Text

Kama Maclean

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Kama Maclean's book A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text (Oxford University Press, 2015) draws on new evidence to deliver a fresh perspective on the ambitions, ideologies and …
Middle Eastern Studies May 24, 2021

Teach-In on Sheikh Jarrah and Israel-Palestine

A Discussion of the May, 2021 Middle East Crisis

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Today, I am introducing a recording of an event on Israel-Palestine organized by members of the history department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The event took …
South Asian Studies May 19, 2021

A Genealogy of Terrorism

Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea

Joseph McQuade

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Today I talked to Joseph McQuade about his book A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea (Cambridge University Press, 2020).  Using India as a case study …
South Asian Studies April 27, 2021

Revolutionary Pasts

Communist Internationalism in Colonial India

Ali Raza

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
In this engaging and innovative history of the communist movement in colonial India, Ali Raza reveals the lives, geographies, and anti-colonial struggles of Indian revolutionaries and how they sought to …
Japanese Studies April 22, 2021

Tropics of Savagery

The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame

Robert Thomas Tierney

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame (U California Press, 2010) is an incisive and provocative study of the figures and tropes of “savagery” in Japanese …
South Asian Studies April 8, 2021

(Dis)connected Empires

Imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan Diplomacy, and the Making of a Habsburg Conquest in Asia

Zoltán Biedermann

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
(Dis)connected Empires: Imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan Diplomacy, and the Making of a Habsburg Conquest in Asia (Oxford University Press, 2019) takes the reader on a global journey to explore the …
Japanese Studies March 17, 2021

Shimaji Mokurai and the Reconception of Religion and the Secular in Modern Japan

Hans Martin Krämer

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Religion is at the heart of such ongoing political debates in Japan as the constitutionality of official government visits to Yasukuni Shrine, yet the very categories that frame these debates …
South Asian Studies March 3, 2021

Slave in a Palanquin

Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka

Nira Wickramasinghe

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
For hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it was also …
South Asian Studies February 16, 2021

The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity

A Cultural Genealogy of Sinhala Nationalism

Harshana Rambukwella

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
What is the role of cultural authenticity in the making of nations? Much scholarly and popular commentary on nationalism dismisses authenticity as a romantic fantasy or, worse, a deliberately constructed …
Japanese Studies February 12, 2021

Embracing 'Asia' in China and Japan

Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony, 1912-1933

Torsten Weber

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Embracing ‘Asia’ in China and Japan: Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) by Torsten Weber examines how Asianism became a key concept in mainstream political discourse between China …
Japanese Studies January 29, 2021

Seeking Sakyamuni

South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism

Richard M. Jaffe

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Though fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In the richly illustrated Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the …
South Asian Studies January 6, 2021

The Loss of Hindustan

The Invention of India

Manan Ahmed Asif

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Did South Asia have a shared regional identity prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth century? This is a subject of heated debate in scholarly circles and …