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Thibaut D Hubert

PhD, Habilitation

Academic Profile

Thibaut d’Hubert (PhD and habilitation EPHE, Paris) is Research associate in the Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie at LMU in Munich. He taught Bengali in the department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) at the University of Chicago from 2010 to 2025 and he works on Middle Bengali poetry and Indo-Persian literature. His primary domain of research is the history of literary practices in eastern South Asia, textual criticism, and the study of poetics in multilingual contexts. He is the author of In the Shade of the Golden Palace: Alaol and Middle Bengali Poetics in Arakan (2018) and Meaningful Rituals: Persian, Arabic, and Bengali in the Nūrnāma Tradition of Eastern Bengal (2021), and co-editor (along with Alexandre Papas) of Jāmī in Regional Contexts: The Reception of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s Works in the Islamicate World, C. 9th/15th–14th/20th (2018). He is currently completing a NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations project titled “A Bengali Sufi Romance from Premodern Myanmar: Alaol’s Sayphulmuluk and Badiujjamal.” His next book project is on the poetics and history of vernacular lyric poetry in eastern South Asia.

Sample Publications

  1. In the Shade of the Golden Palace: Ālāol and Middle Bengali Poetics in Arakan. South Asia Research Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; New Delhi: OUP South Asia edition, 2019.
  2. Meaningful Rituals: Persian, Arabic and Bengali in the Nūrnāma Tradition of Eastern Bengal. Delhi: Primus Books, 2022.
  3. with Alexandre Papas, eds. Jāmī in Regional Contexts: The Reception of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s Works in the Islamicate World, ca. 9th/15th-14th/20th. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Paperback, 2023.
  4. “Homecoming: The Journey Back to India of Kalīla wa-Dimna.” In L’adab toujours recommencé. Origines, transmission et métamorphoses. Ed. Francesca Bellino, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Luca Patrizi, 428-456. Leiden: Brill, 2023.
  5. “Persian at the Court or in the Village? The Elusive presence of Persian in Bengal.” In The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, edited by Nile Green. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300927/the-persianate-world
  6. “‘India Beyond the Ganges’: Defining Arakanese Buddhism in Persianate Colonial Bengal.” Indian Economic & Social History Review 56, no. 1 (March, 2019).  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0019464618817371
  7. “Living in Marvelous Lands: Persianate Vernacular Literatures and Cosmographical Imaginaires around the Bay of Bengal.” In The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere, Edited by Abbas Amanat and Assef Ashraf.Iran Studies 18 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). https://brill.com/view/title/39353
  8. “Literary History of Bengal, 8th to 19th century.” In the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Ed. David Ludden. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. http://asianhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277727-e-39?rskey=zOm0lk&result=1

Scholarly Interests

History of Persian literature; History of South Asian literature; Poetics; Literary criticism

Current Position

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (Research associate), LMU, Munich