Frances Pritchett, Professor of Modern Indic Languages in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, walks us through some key techniques for reading the notoriously difficult Urdu poetry of Mirza Ghalib.
Pritchett teaches courses on Indian civilization, Urdu literature and Islam in South Asia. Pritchett’s publications include Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, The Romance Tradition in Urdu: The Dastan of Amir Hamzah, Urdu Meter: A Practical Handbook, and Urdu Literature: A Bibliography of English Language Sources.