This last issue of 2020 begins with Prasenjit Duara's Presidential Address, “The Art of Convergent Comparison: Case Studies from China and India.” In this essay, Duara develops a methodology that he calls “convergent comparison” that allows him to study the “sensorial modes of vernacularization” often overlooked in the historiography. Through a study of visual culture in China and India, he opens new directions for considering the similarities and divergences in historical processes for a study of the senses. But his argument can be expanded to include aural and olfactory culture as well. More generally, Duara's contribution suggests new directions for China-India comparisons, which have a long history in the pages of the JAS, while adding to the debates on the methods of comparative studies in Asia more generally.
In their article, Brian Lander, Mindi Schneider, and Katherine Brunson...
