South Asia

United States of America

Assistant Professor

University of Wisconsin

sharafi@wisc.edu

University of Wisconsin Law School
975 Bascom Mall
Madison, WI, 53706-1399, USA

phone: 608-265-8428 (office)
fax: 608-262-5485

http://law.wisc.edu/profiles/sharafi@wisc.edu

India, Burma

I am interested in the legal history of colonial South Asia, with a focus
upon western India (especially Bombay and Gujarat). My first book project
is a study of the uses of colonial law by the Parsis of colonial India and
Burma. My second major project examines medical jurisprudence in colonial
India, with a special focus on toxicology. I am also interested in legal
pluralism, particularly religious and customary law, and in the history of
the legal profession in the British Empire.

Available on my website:
http://hosted.law.wisc.edu/wordpress/sharafi/my-publications/

(1) South Asian Legal History:

"The Marital Patchwork of Colonial South Asia: Forum Shopping from Britain
to Baroda", Law and History Review 28:4 (2010), 979-1009 (part of Law
and History Review Forum: Maneuvering the Personal Law System in Colonial
India) (©Law and History Review 2010)

"The Semi-Autonomous Judge in Colonial India: Chivalric Imperialism meets
Anglo-Islamic Dower and Divorce Law", Indian Economic and Social
History Review 46:1 (2009): 57-81

(2) History of the Legal Profession:

"A New History of Colonial Lawyering: Likhovski and Legal Identities in
the British Empire", Law and Social Inquiry 32:4 (fall 2007), 1059-94

(3) Zoroastrian Legal Studies:
Colonial Parsis and Law: A Cultural History. Government Research
Fellowship Lectures 2009-2010 (Mumbai: K. R. Cama Oriental Institute,
2010)

"Judging Conversion to Zoroastrianism: Behind the Scenes of the Parsi
Panchayat Case (1908) In John R. Hinnells and Alan Williams, ed.
Parsis in India and the Diaspora (London: Routledge Curzon, 2007), 159-80

"Bellas Case: Parsi Identity and the Law in Colonial Rangoon, Bombay and
London, 1887-1925, PhD dissertation, Dept. of History, Princeton
University (2006)

(4) Legal Pluralism:

"Justice in Many Rooms since Galanter: De-romanticizing Legal Pluralism
through the Cultural Defense", Law & Contemporary Problems 71 (spring
2008), 139-46

colonial history ; colonial law ; legal pluralism ; customary law ; religious law ; Bombay; Gujarat