In preparing my presidential address for publication, I debated between different options. On the one hand, I could do what I assume is most typically done—that is, take the oral presentation and re-present the material as a research-based journal article. On the other hand, I considered the extraordinary year of challenges, disruptions, traumas, fears, and insights that had preceded this presidential address. Nothing from that year could be considered normal, from a personal or professional point of view; therefore, another option would be to engage in a writing structure reflecting our departure from the normal. For the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), the year of abnormality began with the canceled 2020 Annual Conference in Boston as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, continued with online teaching and meetings, and culminated in a virtual Annual Conference in 2021.

Speaking across disciplines is always easier said than done. Engseng Ho's thought-provoking article strives to do just that (and achieves the goal nicely), with its broad overview of the literature, the numerous examples that it draws on, and the ambitious conceptual innovations it proposes. As the only sociologist invited to comment on Ho's article, I see my task as bringing Ho's article into fruitful conversation with my own discipline, which is known to be indifferent (if not hostile) to area studies and which (unfortunately) remains largely missing in Ho's imagined audience. I do so by drawing on my own work and some of the theoretical developments in the broader discipline in the past two decades or so. To make intelligible where my comments are coming from, let me begin by briefly introducing what sorts of questions interest me as a sociologist.

Perhaps the first thing to note about a forum on the subject of 1919 in Asia is how awkwardly the spatial frame of “Asia” maps onto the international history of that moment. To be sure, the postwar international conjuncture, which I have elsewhere called the “Wilsonian Moment,” had a revolutionary impact across Asia, perhaps more so than in any other world region outside of Europe. As the three preceding essays in this forum note, that year was a waypoint, and sometimes a launching pad, for a rush of novel or renewed revolutionary discourses, connections, and mobilizations in China, India, and Korea, as it was in other parts of Asia and of the world. These were all propelled by the accumulated material and ideological transformations of the years of war, transformation that imbued the moment with revolutionary potential and gave contemporaries a sense that the international order, its power structures and its norms of legitimacy, were uniquely malleable, amenable to concerted action. Indeed, 1919 was a moment in which the very idea of “Asia”—its spaces, the identities they attached to, and the solidarities that ran across and beyond it—was reimagined in ways that at once stitched it together and rent it apart.

When volume 2 of Victor Lieberman's magnum opus first came out a couple of years ago, several colleagues specializing in Southeast Asian Studies called it to my attention and suggested that I read it. They told me that it made use of my ideas (which rather surprised me, since I am in East Asian Studies) and said that I would like it. I certainly found the title intriguing, but never had a chance to read it until being asked to join this roundtable. Now that I have read the book, I find it tremendously invigorating and thought-provoking, so I am all the more grateful for the opportunity afforded by my participation in this roundtable to become acquainted with Lieberman's masterwork.

The Līḷācaritra, the first literary text in Marathi, is a prose biography of Cakradhar compiled by his followers in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. The close attention to place in the Līḷācaritra is key to understanding not only this text from long ago and far away but also the attachment to particular places in other highly mobile worlds, including our own. The Līḷācaritra follows Cakradhar's ascetic peregrinations, as well as journeys made by the many people who came to see him or attempted to return to his presence (his sannidhān). The text's attention to the details of Cakradhar's daily life, including the places he visited, is motivated by bhakti (devotional love). In order to soothe the pain they felt at his absence, the community of Cakradhar's followers practiced remembrance of the things he had said and done, and made pilgrimages to the places where he had stayed.

Three broad concerns inspired Strange Parallels. First, like many students of Southeast Asia, I was long troubled by the fragmented, kaleidoscopic nature of much precolonial historiography. Curiosity to see if I could detect long term, overarching patterns provided my initial spur.