Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India, 1780-1870 (Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World)

Explores the urban, cosmopolitan sensibilities of Urdu poetry written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Lucknow. Ruth Vanita analyzes Rekhti, a type of Urdu poetry distinguished by a female speaker and a focus on women's lives, and shows how it becamea catalyst for the transformation of the ghazal.