Abstract:
This project explores two sites geographically located on the peripheries of European empires and revolving like an increasingly tighter double-helix around them: the Muslim-ruled princely state of Hyderabad in British colonial India and early modern Japan during the years 1868-1926.  As the global world order transitioned from an era of empire to nation over the 19th century, whether and how a nation might be modern without being western became a vexed question.  I argue that Masood envisioned a particular type of Muslim imperial nationalism and Muslim modernism that was possible during the politically liminal period in India during the 1920s and 1930s but which became incompatible with political and social realities after Partition in 1947.

Anchoring the narrative in the biography and peregrinations of Syed Ross Masood and his official report on Japan’s educational system, Negotiating Asian Modernity explores how the Indian Muslim educator Syed Ross Masood looked to Japan as a model of imperial Asian modernity.  Masood served as a bureaucrat for the Muslim ruler of the Indian princely state of Hyderabad for whom he wrote a report, titled Japan and its Educational System (1923), about Japan’s educational system and how and why it should serve as a model for Hyderabad’s educational system.

Speaker’s Bio:
Mimi Hanaoka is the author of Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Peripheries (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which explains themes and literary strategies that “centered” texts from “peripheral” regions in medieval Persia.  She has published numerous articles on Islam, identity, and trans-regional linkages, and her work has appeared in such journals as History of Education Quarterly, Mizan, Journal of Persianate Studies, and Iranian Studies.  Outside of the academy, her work has been published in various outlets with mass reach and appeal, including Grantland, Guernica, Los Angeles Times, GlobalPost, and National Geographic’s Glimpse.  For more information, visit https://religiousstudies.richmond.edu/faculty/mhanaoka/ .