Sunil Sharma

As a humanist, Professor Sunil Sharma is passionate about the role of literary and artistic cultures to enrich and empower the lives of people, a belief that inspires his teaching and research. The overarching theme in his scholarship is the study of historical cross-cultural encounters and intellectual exchange that have led to innovations in Persianate societies, particularly in South Asia, across an entire millennium. A prolific writer, Sharma has written several articles and books, including Mughal Arcadia: Persian Poetry in an Indian Court, which explores the aesthetic representations of idyllic spaces in cities and nature in the early modern poetic imaginary and Amir Khusraw: The Poet of Sultans and Sufis, which synthesizes the sacred and profane. His study of autobiography and travel writing by women who contributed to the advent of modernity resulted in two collaborative projects — Atiya’s Journeys: From Colonial Bombay to Edwardian England and an anthology of translations, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women. An intrepid traveler himself, Professor Sharma has visited parts of West Asia and the Caucasus, several countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia; Central Asia is on his itinerary for this summer.