Amanda Lanzillo

@amandazillo.bsky.social

1658 Followers 1037 Following

Historian of labor, technology & Islam in South Asia | Asst. Prof UChicago SALC | she/her | đź“•Pious Labor now out from UC Press: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/pious-labor/epub-pdf

Cover page of contextual alternate journal, vol 5, 2025, dark blue.
5.01 27 IN THE NINETEENTH AND early twentieth centuries, most readers of Pashto and sellers of Pashto books lived and worked in Afghanistan or in the regions of India bordering Afghanistan, primarily the North West Frontier Province and Baluch-istan. Yet many of the people who produced books for these markets were based hundreds of miles away, in large Indian cities including major centres of multilingual print such as Bombay, Delhi, and Lahore. The development and evolution of a Pashto-language lithographic print culture between the 186os and 1920s resulted from multi-nodal networks of trans-South Asian exchange, cultivated by book merchants, presses, and readers of Pashto themselves. The story of Pashto lithographic print reveals how a disparate network of readers, publishers, book workers, and merchants across South Asia together cultivated a transregional print culture through intellectual and material exchange. In Delhi, Lahore, and Bombay, publishers with limited familiarity with Pashto nonetheless responded to the needs, interests, and demands of geographically distant Pashto readers. To produce books for their distant readership, publishers relied on Pashto-literate scribes, some of whom migrated to Delhi, Lahore, and Bombay specifically to work in Pashto lithographic print. All of these groups- the readers, the publishers, and the scribes-were in turn dependent on the intervention of book merchants in Peshawar, Kabul, and other cities and towns with significant Pashto-reading publics. Book merchants cultivated Pashto-reading publics, and convinced the presses of their viability. They identified and promoted texts that had been popular in manuscript form or those that were popular in other regional languages and might appeal to readers of Pashto. This exchange was never unidirectional; it not only brought books printed in Lahore, Delhi, or Bombay to readers in Peshawar, Kabul, Qandahar, Quetta, or the towns and villages surrounding them, but it also moved Pa…
A black bicycle in front of some green shrubbery and a blue bay. There is a small boat on the bay, and some buildings in the far background.
Protesters carrying signs saying “power to the workers, not the billionaires” and “abolish ice” in the foreground, marching towards the sears tower in Chicago.
APRIL 16 (THU) | 4-5:30pm ET A Book Talk on Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship and Technology in Colonial India Amanda Lanzillo Assistant Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago CO-SPONSORS: Department of South Asian Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Mahindra Humanities Center Persian and Persianate Studies Seminar BARKER 133 | RSVP at islamicstudies.harvard.edu/seminar PIOUS LABOR
Intricately carved light brown stone tombs under a dome
Stacks of dusty bound books and papers in a corner)
A large brown building with multiple domes. Students in white Kurtas and black jackets walk on the road in front of it.
A white woman in a black kurta and purple scarf stand in the middle of a lane next to an old building with detailed carving. Men and women walk in the foreground and background.
A massive unfinished ceiling mural with a blue background, gold calligraphy, and intricate design depicting the universe.
Sindh archives, written in English and Sindhi, with blue tiling around, and a Pakistan flag in the foreground.
A poster reading: THE AGA KHAN UNIVERSITY The Faculty of Arts and Sciences presents Public Conversations fieldnotes INAUGURAL TALK Out of Empire: Social Historical Approaches to India-Afghanistan Hijrat of 1920 This talk examines the hijrat of 1920, when tens of thousands left British India for Afghanistan. Challenging portrayals of the migration as a doomed, elite-driven Pan-Islamist movement, it draws on migrant memoirs to center the perspectives of the muhajirin themselves. Focusing on migrants journeys, the talk shows how experiences of hijrat varied by gender, class, age, and ethno-linguistic background, and how social backgrounds shaped efforts to build new communities beyond British rule. A talk by Amanda Lanzillo, Assistant Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago 17 Wednesday, February 4, 2026 | 4:00PM D-Lab, 10th Floor, UC Building, Aga Khan University SWIPE TO LEARN MORE
A poster reading: PUBLIC LECTURE Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India SPEAKER Amanda Lanzillo Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Amanda Lanzillo examines Islam, labor, and technology in colonial South Asia. She traces migrations between British India and Afghanistan to reveal how religious ethics, mobility, and craft reshaped social worlds beyond empire. REGISTER Tuesday. February 03, 2026 05:30 PM 07:00 PM For More Details: 021 38104700 Ext: 2671, 3003 +92 21 111 422 422 www.iba.edu.pk G&T Auditorium, Main Campus, IBA
A smedium sized ginger and white dog in black snow boots struggles to coordinate her legs as she walks down a hallway.
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
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.
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.
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.
A black and white photograph showing a parade of migrants and their supporters during the 1920 hijrat from India to Afghanistan.
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.
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.
Banner reading 2025 Time Life Chicago Half Marathon + 5K, September 28, 2025
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
A poster with the following text: The Seminar Committee, Department of History, University of Delhi Invites you to a talk on “Out of Empire: Social Histories of the 1929 India-Afghanistan Hijrat,” Amanda Lanzillo, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, Wednesday 5 March, 3:30pm, Room 6 Shatyakam Bhavan (near social sciences building).
Another page in Urdu describing major sight-worthy factories and workshops of Lahore. This page includes the Mufid-e 'Aam Press, the Punjab Cotton Press Company, the matchbook factory, the acid factory, the oil factory, and the electric workshop.
A poster for an event, featuring a book cover (Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India, with a photograph of colonial-era Indian carpenters posed at work), and a photograph of the author (a white woman with light brown hair wearing wearing a black suit with purple top, standing in a garden). The text on the poster says "CHS Seminar Series: Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India, Dr. Amanda Lanzillo, University of Chicago, 3pm, 19 February 2025, Room 326, SSS III).
A white woman in a green kurta reads a bound collection of newspapers at a table with a red tablecloth. Brown bookshelves can be seen in the background.
Outside of the Mumbai Jama Masjid, cream colored with several domes. A goods carrying truck is parked in front, and groups of people stroll by.
A white cat with yellow and black spots sitting on a black chair in a lecture hall.
A scene in the red courtyard the Fatehpuri Masjid in Delhi. In the foreground a in a winter hat man reads the newspaper. The mosque itself stands in the background.
A poster advertising an event to be held at CSPS Delhi on 21 Jan at 4pm. The poster features the cover of the book, Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India, and photographs of the three speakers, author Amanda Lanzillo (University of Chicago), discussant Saeed Ahmad (Jindal School of Art and Architecture), and chair P. C. Saidalavi (Shiv Nadar University)
A small red and black fox, carrying a full white bag of trash, in front of a car.
A self portrait of artist Raqib Shaw, with the landscape of Kashmir in the foreground and the cityscape of London in the background. A male figure at the center is burning a colorful carpet.