Date
September 15, 2026
September
15
303 International Center
Book Talk: City of Lyrics: Ordinary Poets and Islamicate Popular Culture in Early Modern Delhi, with Nathan L. M. Tabor
Nathan L. M. Tabor is an associate professor in the Department of History at Western Michigan University.
City of Lyrics: Ordinary Poets and Islamicate Popular Culture in Early Modern Delhi chronicles the origins of a global poetry phenomenon. For centuries, Urdu-speaking poets and their audiences have gathered for mushāʿirahs, literary competitions for spoken-word verse.
Today the mushāʿirah is a global phenomenon, as audiences in the millions convene in person and online for hours of poetic performance. Tracing these modern gatherings back to their origins, Nathan Tabor introduces readers to the popular emergence of the mushāʿirah in eighteenth-century Delhi.
Scores of poets composed two-line lyric poems, called ġhazals, that they muttered, sang, shouted, and spat out in contentious salon spaces across India’s largest metropolis. Delhi’s mushāʿirahs circulated lyrics, satires, and songs for both common and elite poets, who traded and assessed words as an urban commodity that defined hierarchy, taste, and notions of delight.
Organized by the MSU Department of History and co-sponsored by James Madison College, the MSU Muslim Studies Program, and the MSU Asian Studies Center.
City of Lyrics: Ordinary Poets and Islamicate Popular Culture in Early Modern Delhi chronicles the origins of a global poetry phenomenon. For centuries, Urdu-speaking poets and their audiences have gathered for mushāʿirahs, literary competitions for spoken-word verse.
Today the mushāʿirah is a global phenomenon, as audiences in the millions convene in person and online for hours of poetic performance. Tracing these modern gatherings back to their origins, Nathan Tabor introduces readers to the popular emergence of the mushāʿirah in eighteenth-century Delhi.
Scores of poets composed two-line lyric poems, called ġhazals, that they muttered, sang, shouted, and spat out in contentious salon spaces across India’s largest metropolis. Delhi’s mushāʿirahs circulated lyrics, satires, and songs for both common and elite poets, who traded and assessed words as an urban commodity that defined hierarchy, taste, and notions of delight.
Organized by the MSU Department of History and co-sponsored by James Madison College, the MSU Muslim Studies Program, and the MSU Asian Studies Center.
Time
2:45 PM - 4:00 PM
Location
303 International Center
Organizer
Nathan L. M. Tabor