Amanda Lanzillo
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amandazillo.bsky.social
Amanda Lanzillo
@amandazillo.bsky.social
1.5K followers 990 following 240 posts
Historian of labor, technology & Islam in South Asia | Asst. Prof UChicago SALC | she/her | 📕Pious Labor now out from UC Press: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/pious-labor/epub-pdf
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amandazillo.bsky.social
Excited to see my latest article out, exploring cultures of production in highly localized trades in north India. Part of a forthcoming special section of “South Asia” on artisan lives and forms of production that I co-edited with Arun Kumar and Adhitya Dhanapal.

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/VYR6S...
SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES Scissors from Meerut, Locks from Aligarh: Locality and Production in North India, 1870-1950 Amanda Lanzillo Department South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA ABSTRACT This article explores how the emergence of a national Indian economy conditioned the economic and social lives of artisans in highly localised trades. It asks whether artisan workers in localised trades were able to exert influence on the development of 'national' cultures of craft and consumption between 1870 and 1950. I approach these two questions through a study of two metalworking trades in North India that boasted a strong association with a regional city-scissors, which are often associated with the city of Meerut, and locks, usually associated with the city of Aligarh. In the early twentieth century, these goods were sold in part through an advertising culture that presented the city of production as a 'brand: The article examines how local goods became Swadeshi goods, highlighting the impact of the nationalist project to cultivate an 'indigenous' economy on producers who had cultivated a reputation for quality based on locality. KEYWORDS Advertising; artisanship; industry; locality; metalwork; North India; Swadeshi
November 17, 2025 at 12:12 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
The dog in the first snow of the year.
A médium-sized tan and white dog with big ears in a yellow harness looks at the camera. She stands on a field covered with snow. In the background is a building and clouds.
November 11, 2025 at 3:15 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Highly recommend bringing your dog to your academic conference.
A white and tan medium sized dog licking her nose stands in front of a white woman in a blue jacket, holding the dog’s leash. They both stand in front of a statue of the mascot of the university of Wisconsin, on a concrete pier overlooking a blue lake.
October 25, 2025 at 6:15 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Delighted that Pious Labor (@ucpress.bsky.social and Three Essays Collective) has been awarded the South Asian Muslim Studies Association biennial book prize!
faculty.thecollege.asu.edu/samsa/announ...
October 17, 2025 at 1:24 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
My first Chicago half marathon to mark the start of the new academic year!

1 hr 55 min 42 sec time; not bad for being pretty undertrained (an international move will do that 🤷‍♀️).
September 28, 2025 at 3:40 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Pious Labor (@ucpress.bsky.social ) reviewed in the AHR by @farinamir.bsky.social . I've been fortunate that the book has been read by several thoughtful and generous reviewers, and I'm especially thrilled to see this one.

academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...
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Lanzillo is keen to see labor history as a site for Islamic history. Pious Labor does so admirably through both method and content. As Lanzillo rightly underscores, the history of Islam in colonial India has largely been written through “an insistence on the primacy of canonical thinkers and texts” (17). Pious Labor elegantly portrays how artisans anchored their labor in Islamic pasts. Woodworkers traced their skills to the prophet Nuh (Noah); tailors to Idris (Enoch); blacksmiths to Dawud (David). Artisans often connected their trade and/or skill to Sufi pirs (guides/saints), as was the case with scribes and metalsmiths. By showing us an “artisanal Islam” in a range of contexts, the book effectively makes working- and lower-class histories integral to an understanding of Islam in South Asia. Pious Labor is refreshingly original in bringing histories of economy, labor, technology, and Islam into dialogue with one another, and it makes contributions to each of these fields of history. Additionally, by highlighting how Muslim artisans emphasized the Islamic origins of their trades and the pious nature of their labor and rendered new technologies as sources for their accumulation of social and cultural capital, Lanzillo makes a valuable contribution to the history of late colonial India.
September 14, 2025 at 1:07 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
My next book, Out of Empire, is now under contract with @uncpress.bsky.social! The book provides a social historical perspective on the hijrat of 1920, during which tens of thousands of Indians left their homeland in search of freer lives in an independent, Muslim-ruled territory: Afghanistan.
A black and white photograph showing a parade of migrants and their supporters during the 1920 hijrat from India to Afghanistan.
September 12, 2025 at 1:47 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
An early example of testimonials in Urdu advertising! For the homeopathic treatment Amrat Dhara, which will help you with "any struggle in life," in a 1931 edition of Sadaqat (Kanpur). The advertisement features "a few letters of the 36,000" that they claim to have received from users 👀.

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September 11, 2025 at 4:35 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Project “get my doggo to Chicago” has commenced!
August 8, 2025 at 8:15 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Movers at my flat today, which meant a day long adventure in keeping the doggo out from underfoot.
We covered a good chunk of Southwark!
July 22, 2025 at 3:25 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Going through some of my lithos as I begin to pack. Here’s a cover of a Gramophone Guide: Payam-e Dil (Karachi, c.1935). 😍
July 19, 2025 at 11:00 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
LGBT banner of the train driver’s union (c. 2000) + protest banner against immigration laws that restrict commonwealth citizen’s rights to migrate to UK (c.1971)
July 13, 2025 at 11:38 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Jayaben Desai and the 1976 Grunwick strike + 1978 Labour poster in Punjabi (Don’t put the clocks back, keep Tories out)
July 13, 2025 at 11:38 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Impressed with the People’s History Museum in Manchester, not least for opening with cleared-eyed statements like “Empire, enslaved people, and cotton made Britain wealthy in the 19th century…”
Here are a few of my fave union banners and posters from the exhibits.
July 13, 2025 at 11:38 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Took my doggo (and my family) up to Scotland. Walked in the rain.
A white and ginger dog, attached by a yellow leash to a white womanhood with brown hair wearing a red rain jacket and black leggings, standing on brown rocks in the rain. Both are looking directly at the camera. Behind them other people are climbing the rocks. The sky is grey.
July 9, 2025 at 11:47 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Linguistic boundary-making (literal).
A stone wall with a sign reading “Inchewan Burn: Boundary between Little Dunkeld and Birnam, said to separate the Gaelic speaking Highlands from the Lowland Scots.” In the background is a small stream and several homes. Further back are trees and a cloudy sky.
July 4, 2025 at 11:28 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Signed up for my first Chicago-based half (anyone joining me?). I guess this move is really happening 🤷‍♀️.
Banner reading 2025 Time Life Chicago Half Marathon + 5K, September 28, 2025
June 26, 2025 at 6:00 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
So, does the new version of Abhilekh Patal (digitized National Archives of India) just not work at all now? Initially this version would let me load 1-3 documents before giving an error page, but now I can't access anything at all. Have tried browsers and computers.
June 24, 2025 at 4:55 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
If you're around London on 25 June at 6pm, come join us at the beautiful Aga Khan Centre, where I'll speak about the final chapter of my recent book and tell the story of a Shi'a Muslim mason and his conception of artisan Islam in colonial India. Register here:
www.iis.ac.uk/.../the-piou...
A poster from a website, reading "The Pious Labour of a Muslim Master Mason: Craft, Authority and Sh'ia identity in British India," with a registration link, from the website for the Institute of Ismaili Studies. It also shows part of the cover page of an Urdu-language lithographed text.
June 19, 2025 at 11:24 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
The new Routledge Handbook of Subalterns Across History is out. My chapter draws on Urdu, Pashto, and Punjabi trade histories and poetry to explore Muslim workers’ intersecting claims on their faith and labour, and asks how we identify archives of subaltern religion. DM if you’d like a copy!
Book chapter title and abstract reading: MUSLIM LABOURERS AND SUBALTERN RELIGION Assertions of Faith and Community in Colonial India Amanda Lanzillo Can the claims of labourers on religious pasts and the relationship between their faith and their work shed light on their experiences as subaltern subjects under colonial capitalism? This chapter analyses the religious commitments and assertions of Muslim labouring communities in colonial India, across varied regions including the United Provinces, Punjab, and the North West Frontier Provinces. Drawing on a trilingual archive of Urdu, Pashto, and Punjabi trade histories and workers' poetry, it argues that by narrating the relationship between their labour and faith, Muslim labourers made sense of - and even sought to disrupt - their own social positionalities within the colonial political economy.
June 4, 2025 at 1:44 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
My pupper when we have to take the tube escalator 🤷‍♀️
June 1, 2025 at 4:54 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Island of Grinda, on the Stockholm Archipelago.
Dusk photo overlooking a sea inlet on the island of Grind. Two tall trees are in the foreground, with the water and another shore in the background. The sun is nearly set in the background.
May 6, 2025 at 11:49 AM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Delighted to share that the Indian print edition of my book, Pious Labor, is *coming soon* from Three Essays Collective!
A book cover for a new edition of a book titled "Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India" by Amanda Lanzillo. The cover is light purple, and features an image of woodworkers in an workshop in early twenieth-century India.
April 15, 2025 at 4:03 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
A thoughtful short review of Pious Labor (@ucpress.bsky.social) in Religious Studies Review, by Steven C. Dinero. It concisely captures many of the complexities in Muslim artisans' engagement with the Indian colonial industrial economy that I sought to highlight in the book.
March 25, 2025 at 3:13 PM
amandazillo.bsky.social
Some reflections on our barbed wire world at the Cartographies of the Unseen exhibit.

Work by Reena Saini Kallat, at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Bombay.
A globe split by barbed wire, with wild animals and trees and electrical wires. By Reena Saini Kallat at the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum (Bombay).
March 15, 2025 at 10:50 AM