Assistant Professor
sd1381@nyu.edu
(212) 992-3736
616 - 1 Wash Pl
Office Hours
Tuesday 10:00-12:00
Wednesday 10:00-12:00
B.A., History and English, Rutgers University, 2005
M.A., History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2009
Ph.D., History, University of California, Los Angeles, 2016
Subah Dayal is a historian of the Indian Ocean, with a focus on early modern South Asia and the Persianate world. Her current book draws on literary and archival materials in Persian, Urdu, and Dutch to examine how regional household lineages in the Mughal empire's peripheries transformed institutions and circulation networks in the Indian Ocean. Her research interests are in connected histories, household studies, comparative early modernities, global history, and pre-modern documentary and manuscript cultures. Her publications include "Vernacular Conquest? A Persian patron and his image in the 17th-century Deccan" in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (Duke, 2017); "Making the 'Mughal' Soldier: Ethnicity, Identification, and Documentary Culture in southern India 1600-1700" in the Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient (Brill, 2019), and "On Heroes and History: Responding to the Shahnama (The Book of Kings) in the Deccan 1500-1800," which will appear in the edited volume, Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation (Indiana University Press, 2020). Dayal also developed pedagogical approaches for teaching connected histories in the classroom through an NEH Summer Institute Fellowship in 2017 on "Beyond East and West: Exchanges and Interactions across the Early Modern World (1400-1800)." After receiving her BA from Rutgers University and Masters from the Center for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Dayal earned her PhD in History from UCLA, where her research was funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. Before coming to Gallatin, she was assistant professor of South Asian history at Tulane University and Clemson University.
2021
Subah Dayal has been awarded a 2022 Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress to research “The Household State: Empire and Belonging in the Mughal World.” Dayal will examine the Naqvi Family Collection in the Africa and Middle East Division.
Indian Ocean before 1800 connected histories medieval and early modern South Asia historical sociology the Persianate world comparative Islamic empires vernacular literature household studies migration and movement global history pre-modern documentary culture and manuscript studies
PUBLICATIONS
Subah Dayal wrote “Mohammed Shakeb: Preserver of Mughal Archival Documents and Reconstructor of Libraries” as a tribute to the polymath historian in The Wire, published in February 2021.
Dayal’s article, “Making the ‘Mughal’ Solider: Ethnicity, Identification, and Documentary Culture in Southern India, c. 1600-1700,” is included in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient.
MEDIA
Subah Dayal was featured in “Histories of Migration and Exchange between Iran and the Deccan,” episode #30 of the Ajam Media Collective podcast in December 2020.
2023 Spring
Sailors, Convicts, and Pilgrims: The Indian Ocean Since 1500
Mughals and the Early Modern World
2023 Fall
Community, Conflict, and Connections: The Indian Ocean Before 1500
2022 Fall
Community, Conflict, and Connections: The Indian Ocean Before 1500
2021 Spring
Community, Conflict, and Connections: The Indian Ocean Before 1500