Aditya Harchand

I earned a B.Arts Sc. in Honours Arts and Science and Religious Studies from McMaster University, where I studied Sanskrit and concentrated in Buddhism and East Asian Religions. I then pursued an M.A. in History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where I held a Chester W. Laing Memorial Fellowship, studying comparative religion and Islam in South Asia and the Middle East.

At the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, I am a Ph.D. student working primarily on Tamil language and literature. My research interests lie at the nexus of literary history, religious studies, and the study of material and sensory culture. In its current formulation, my project brings together both courtly and non-courtly texts indicative of polyglossia in early-modern Tamil Nadu. By analyzing these understudied texts in various languages — Arwi (or Arabic-Tamil), Persian, Urdu, Marathi, and Arabic — alongside modern histories of Tamil, the Tamils, and Tamil literature, I problematize the very category of “Tamil”, testing its usefulness as a descriptor of the literary, the religious, the sensory, and the historical in the region.

I have trained extensively in South Asian and Middle Eastern languages at various academic institutions in Canada, the United States, India, and Morocco. I remain devoted to reading across literary and linguistic borders and continue to learn languages (most recently Somali) which help me become more intimate with not only the period and space I study, but also the multicultural context of my hometown, Toronto.

Photo by Bonatto Photography, edited by Abbas Tayebali

M.A., South Asian Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago, 2024

M.A., History of Religions, The University of Chicago Divinity School, 2022

B.Arts Sc., Arts & Science and Religious Studies, McMaster University, 2020

• First-Year Tamil (Lecturer, Fall 2024, The University of Chicago)
• Buddha Then and Now: Transformations from Amaravati to Anuradhapura (Course Assistant, Winter 2021, The University of Chicago Divinity School)
• Introduction to Buddhism (Teaching Assistant, Fall 2018 & Fall 2019, McMaster University)

“Perfumes for the People: Snuffs, Sharbats and Home Remedies in Colonial Tamil Nadu.” Panel: New Approaches to the Study of Smell Culture in South Asia, The Annual Conference on South Asia (2024), Madison, WI, U.S.A.

“‘Risen from Satan’s Urine’: The Trial Against Tobacco in Sām Ṣihāputt’īṉs Tampāk Mālai”, Panel: Vernacular Worlds in the Arabic Cosmopolis, The Annual Conference on South Asia (2023), Madison, WI, U.S.A.

“Perfumes for the People: Snuffs, Sharbats and Home Remedies in Colonial Tamil Nadu.” MARG 75, no. 2 (September–December 2023): 86–93. Volume entitled Histories of Indian Perfume, edited by James McHugh.