William R. Pinch is Professor of History and Global South Asian Studies at Wesleyan University.
Pinch is interested in why things happen—especially surprising, disruptive things like love, murder, mutiny, and revolt—and how people record them in prose and poetry, and (increasingly) film. His teaching and research focus mainly on the history of the region now known (in the language of Cold War geopolitics) as “South Asia.” A fascination with historiography, philosophy of history, methodology, microhistory, and metahistory has led to a long and fruitful relationship with the journal History and Theory, and to courses like “Yoga: a Global History” (HIST 167) and “The Historian as Detective” (HIST 200). Pinch also is interested in the history of geopolitics, spycraft, and intelligence gathering in Asia, and regularly teaches a seminar on these themes (“The Great Game” [HIST 317].)
Pinch is the author of three books—From Mutiny to Revolt: Women and the Beginning of 1857 (due out in December 2025), Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (2006), and Peasants and Monks in British India (1996)—and numerous articles and book chapters. He also enjoys translation, one result of which is a forthcoming volume in the Murty Classical Library of India, entitled In Praise of a Yogi King (2026), a joint translation (with Dalpat Rajpurohit and the late Allison Busch) of Padmakar’s 1792 poem Himmatbahādur Vīrudāvali about the victory of Anupgiri Gosain over Arjun Singh at Ajaygarh in eastern Bundelkhand.
Pinch’s current research, to which he will devote himself in 2025-26, examines agrarian revolution in Bihar and its global reverberations, especially during World War II.
Learn more about Pinch’s research here.
For information on Pinch’s teaching, click here.
An abbreviated CV is available here.