Current Courses

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Graduate Course Offerings

Hindi Cinema: from Bombay to Bollywood

SALC 30509 (=SALC 20509,CMST 24107,CMST 34107, GNSE 20509, HIST 26709, HIST 36709). This course maps the transformation of the Hindi film industry in India. Starting out as a regional film production center, how did the Bombay film industry and Hindi cinema gain the reputation of being the leader of Indian cinema? This despite the fact that most critical acclaim, by the state and film critics, was reserved for “art cinema.” Through an analysis of Hindi films from the 1950s to the present we map the main trends of this complex artistic/industrial complex to arrive at an understanding of the deep connect between cinema and other social imaginaries. Rochona Majumdar, Winter 2016.

Indian Art Cinema

SALC 30510 (=SALC 20510,CMST 24108,CMST 34108) What do we mean when we refer to “art films” in the Indian context? Is it fair to refer to the body of film works that come under this rubric as Indian national cinema? Through a close analysis of films by Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Mani Kaul, Basu Chatterjee, M. S. Sathyu, Girish Kasaravalli, and Aparna Sen, this course will analyze the different currents in Indian art cinema. Rochona Majumdar, Spring 2016.

Survey of Persian Literature: Prose 900-1500 CE

SALC 30613 (=SALC 20613, PERS 30010, ISLM 30010, CMES 30010). PQ: 2 years of Persian or the equivalent. This course surveys the development of Persian prose literature from the tenth to fifteenth century, with a focus on prose genres, including scientific texts (e.g., Hodud al-`alam), mirrors for princes (e.g., Qabus-nama), political theory (e.g., Siyasat-nama), sufi hagiography (e.g., Attar's Tazkerat al-owliya), mystical treatises (e.g., Kashf al-Mahjub, Kimiya-ye sa`adat, Savaneh), philosophical allegories (e.g., `Aql-e sorx), historical texts (such as Tarix-e jahangosha), and belles lettres (e.g, maqamat of Hamidi, and prose romances), and religious texts (such as Rowzat al-shohada). We will become acquainted with a variety of authors, consider the ways that Persian language itself is changing, and how genres evolve.  Throughout, we will consider how intellectual history is revealed through Persian prose texts and question the traditional categories of chronological or stylistic periodization, and evaluate how (or whether?) one might best write a literary history of Persian, or a vernacular intellectual history of Islam, from the perspective of the Persian prose tradition.  This course is suitable as a third-year Persian course for students who have completed the intermediate Persian sequence.  Franklin Lewis, Autumn.

Music of South Asia

SALC 30800 (=SALC 20800, MUSI 23700). PQ: Any 10000-level music course or consent of instructor. This course examines the music of South Asia as an aesthetic domain with both unity and particularity in the region. The unity of the North and South Indian classical traditions is treated historically and analytically, with special emphasis placed on correlating their musical and mythological aspects. The classical traditions are contrasted with regional, tribal, and folk music with respect to fundamental conceptualizations of music and the roles it plays in society. In addition, the repertories of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, as well as states and nations bordering the region, are covered. Music is also considered as a component of myth, religion, popular culture, and the confrontation with modernity. Kaley Mason, Autumn.

Classical Literature of South Asia: Part One

SALC 32606.  (=SALC 22605).  This is a broadly chronological survey of South Asia's literary traditions. In the first part of this two-part sequence, our focus will be on the first millennium CE, and we will read a wide variety of literary works in translation: lyric poetry, stage plays, courtly epics, romances and satires. We will read these texts as representing both evolving traditions of literary art and a diverse constellation of social imaginaries. Our conversations will thus range over: questions of language, genre, form and style; subcontinental traditions of poetics, which elaborated the themes and techniques of literary art; issues of sexuality and gender; the intellectual and religious traditions with which works of literature were in conversation; contexts of performance; and issues of literary history. We will sometimes read short texts in the original languages (Prakrit, Tamil and Sanskrit) to gain a better understanding of their texture and technique, but no prior knowledge of South Asian languages is required. The second part of this two-part sequence will cover South Asian literature from about 1000 to 1750. The courses may be taken in any order.  Andrew Ollett. Autumn 2019.

How to do things with South Asian texts? Literary Theories and South Asian Literatures

SALC 33700 (=CMLT 33700). This course provides an overview of different methods, approaches and themes currently prevalent in the study of South Asian texts from various periods.  Topics covered will include translation (theory and practice), book history, literary history, textual criticism, genre theory (the novel in South Asia), literature and colonialism, cultural mobility studies (Greenblatt) and comparative literature/new philologies (Spivak, Ette).  Readings will include work by George Steiner, Sheldon Pollock, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Terry Eagleton, Stephen Greenblatt, Gayatri Spivak, Ottmar Ette, and others.  We will discuss these different approaches with particular reference to the texts with which participating students are working for their various projects.  Students interested in both pre-modern and modern/contemporary texts are welcome.  While the course is organized primarily from a literary studies perspective, it will also be of interest to students of history, anthropology and other disciplines dealing with "texts".  The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students (no prior knowledge of literary theory or South Asian writing is assumed).  Sascha Ebeling.  Winter 2019.

Mughal India: Tradition and Transition

SALC 37701 (=SALC 27701, HIST 26602, HIST 36602) The focus of this course is on the period of Mughal rule during the late sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, especially on selected issues that have been at the center of historiographical debate in the past decades.  Muzaffar Alam, Autumn.

Tibet: Culture, Art, and History

SALC 39002 (=SALC 29002).  This class will introduce students to Tibetan civilization from pre-modernity to the present with an emphasis on literature, society, visual arts, and history. Attention will be paid to Tibet's relations with neighboring polities in South, East, and Central Asia, as well as distinctive indigenous practices. The course will cover a range of Tibetan cultural forms, highlighting pre-modern sciences of medicine, logic, and meditation, as well as contemporary developments in Tibetan modernity and the diaspora communities. Course materials will include primary sources in translation (e.g. Dunhuang manuscripts and other literature), contemporary scholarship, as well audio-visual materials. In addition to informed participation in course meetings/discussions, including regular, timely completion of reading assignments, students are expected to write two short (5-7pp) papers on topics assigned by the instructors. *All course readings will be available on electronic reserve via Canvas (http://canvas.uchicago.edu/)* Christian Wedemeyer. Autumn 2018.

Intro to Buddhism

SALC 39700 (=SALC 29700, HREL 39700, RLST 26150, CHDV 39701, CHDV 29701).   This course, which is intended for both undergraduates and graduates, introduces students to some aspects of the philosophy, psychology, and meditation practice of the Theravada Buddhist tradition in premodern and modern South and Southeast Asia, and also in the modern west. It looks first at basic Buddhist ideas and practices, , and then and the relationship(s) between Buddhism and psychology, in two ways: in relation to the indigenous psychology of the Shan in contemporary Northern Thailand, and then in the ways elements from Buddhist meditation have been taken up in recent years by western scientific psychologists. The course ends with an ethnography of a Buddhist meditation monastery in Thailand. Throughout the course attention is paid to the role(s) of gender. Steven Collins. Spring 2017.

Research Themes I

SALC 40100 (=HIST 61802, CMLT 40101).  This graduate course offers an introduction to the theory and practice of book history and print culture studies, a relatively recent and vibrant field of inquiry within South Asian Studies. The course will explore some of the main theoretical approaches, themes, and methodologies of the history of the book in comparative perspective, and discuss the specific conditions and challenges facing scholars of South Asian book history. Topics include orality and literacy, technologies of scribal and print production, the sociology of texts, authorship and authority, the print "revolution" and knowledge formation under British colonial rule, the legal existence of books, the economy of the book trade, popular print, readership and consumption. We will also engage with the text as material artifact and look at the changing contexts, techniques, and practices of book production in the transition from manuscript to print.  Ulrike Stark. Autumn 2019..

Research Themes II

SALC 40200.  This course will look at texts and documentary films about both male and female renunciation (monasticism) in South and Southeast Asia (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism).  It will also read and discuss Bill Nichols’ book Introduction to Documentary Film.  It will be concerned with how these institutions and traditions are represented in the two media.  How far are the media similar or different?  Steven Collins, Winter 2016. Topic: Representing Renunciation

Many Ramayanas

SALC 42501 (=HREL 628-4250). No prerequisites. Requirement: Essay at the end of the quarter. Swift 208. Monday/Wednesday 3 to 4:20, A close reading of the great Hindu Epic, the story of Rama's recovery of his wife, Sita, from the demon Ravana on the island of Lanka, with special attention to changes in the telling of the story throughout Indian history, up to its present use as a political weapon against Muslims and a rallying point for Hindu fundamentalists.  Readings in Paula Richman, Many Ramayanas and Questioning Ramayanas; in translations of the Ramayanas of Valmiki, Kampan , Tulsi, and Michael Dutta, as well as the RamajatakaRama the Steadfast, trans. Brockington; the Yogavasistha-Maharamayana; and contemporary comic books and films. Wendy Doniger, Spring 2018.

Wives, Widows, Prostitutes: Indian Lit & the Women's Question

SALC 43800 (=SALC 27904, HIND 47904, GNSE 27902/47900).  PQ: Basic knowledge of Hindi and/or Urdu is preferable but not required. From the early nineteenth century onward, the debate on the condition and status of Indian women was an integral part of the discourse on the state of civilization, Hindu tradition, and social reform in colonial India. This course explores how Indian authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries engaged with the so-called "women's question." Caught between middle-class conservatism and the urge for social reform, Hindi and Urdu writers addressed controversial issues such as female education, child marriage, widow remarriage, and prostitution in their fictional and other writings. We will explore the tensions of a literary and social agenda that advocated the "uplift" of women as a necessary precondition for the progress of the nation, while also expressing patriarchal fears about women's rights and freedom. Texts will be read in English translation.  Ulrike Stark, Spring 2016.

Women's Rights, Cultural Nationalism, and Moral Panics: Africa and India

SALC 43105 (=CDIN, ANTH, CHDV, HIST).  Contemporary history is rife with a tension between the rise of a rights discourse and accompanying moral panics. This dialectic constitutes the central theme of this course.  Why is it that women’s economic success, political recognition, and rights to their bodies have been accompanied by “moral panics” over the visibility, mobility, and sexuality of women and girls?  And what might this tell us about changing forms of differential citizenship in the contemporary world?  In order to take up these questions, this course offers a historical and anthropological perspective on the questions of gender and freedom/ moral panic/ differential citizenship.  We focus our inquiry on empirical examples drawn from Africa and India.  Rochona Majumdar.  Winter 2017.

Islam in Modern South Asia

SALC 47301 (=SALC 37301, HIST 45903, NEHC 37301).  PQ: Open to graduate students and advanced undergrads only.  In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Islam in South Asia came to embrace roughly one third of the Muslims of the world.  It also moved from being primarily a receiver of Islamic influences from outside the subcontinent to increasingly being a transmitter of influences to the wider Muslim world. The beginning of the period saw great changes for Muslims as, after 600 years of wielding power, they became subject to British rule.  In this context there was a ferment of new ideas as Muslims confronted the challenges of maintaining a Muslim society without power and in the face of the apparent triumph of Western civilisation.  Out of the ferment came ideas and institutions which were to have great influence in South Asia, but also far beyond: the Islamic modernism of Saiyid Ahmad Khan, his Aligarh movei Ahl-i Hadith and the Tablighi Jama<at; and the political Islam pioneered by Mawlana Mawdudi and his Jama<ati Islami.  On the political side there was the development of Muslim separatism, eventually led by the remarkable Jinnah, and culminating in the partition of British India at independence.  A growing issue from the 1920s was what should be the relationship between Islam and the modern state.  Arguably, Pakistan was to be the laboratory in which the problem was worked out.  But it was no less a problem for Muslims in India and Bangladesh, and in all these states finding a solution has been subject to the play of politics, national and international. While covering the ground above the course will also be concerned to address these themes amongst others: the relationship between Islam and the Indic world in which it moved; and issues of authority, identity, emerging individualism, Pan-Islamic loyalties and modernities.

           The course will consist of eight three-hour classes, each focussed on two topics with an introduction and student presentations, followed by a question-and-answer session. In the final hour and a quarter of each three-hour session, Professor Robinson will give a lecture on major themes in Islam in South Asia since 1800, linking them were appropriate to developments elsewhere in the Islamic world.  Francis Robinson, Winter 2016.

Transmission of Islamic Knowledge in South Asia since 1800

SALC 47302 (SALC 37302, HIST 45904, NEHC 37302).  PQ: Open to graduate students and advanced undergrads only.  One of the most striking developments in the Muslim world over the past two centuries is that, in spite of most of it being subject to colonial rule, or to rulers who wished to reshape Muslim societies after the model of the West, Islamic knowledge has come to be more vigorously and more widely disseminated than ever before. There has been an Islamisation of Muslim societies from below. This course will examine this most important process in the context of South Asia. We will examine the role of ulama, the madrasas in which they teach, the nature of the Dars-i Nizami madrasa curriculum, and the reasons for the spread of these institutions from c. 100 formal madrasas in 1900 to c. 100,000 today. Women’s madrasas will not be neglected. We will examine Sufis and Sufi shrines, and their relationships to their constituencies; we will explore the role of spiritual devotion in the life of the individual. Print was only taken up in South Asia in the nineteenth century so we will need to investigate the impact of the printed word. Sermons had a role to play, but particularly two types of sermons, the milad sermon on aspects of the life of the Prophet and Shi<a sermons mourning the fate of the Imams. Groups with a particularly proselytizing purpose will be studied, for instance, the Tablighi Jama<at. But also women’s proselytizing groups such as al-Huda and the women’s reading groups which have flourished under the Jama<ati Islami and its affiliates. Amongst the themes which will be addressed are: the significance of the move from orality to literacy, the impact of print, the emergence of self-interpretation and the impact of the electronic world.

          Each class will be focused on two topics with an introduction and student presentations followed by a question-and-answer session. In the final hour and a quarter of each three-hour session, Professor Robinson will give a lecture on a major theme in the transmission of Islamic knowledge and where appropriate link it to developments elsewhere in the Islamic world.  Francis Robinson, Spring 2016.

Readings In Madhyamaka

SALC 48317 (=DVPR 41700).  This course will involve close philosophical attention to a representative range of Indian Madhyamaka texts.  Prerequisite:  Some Tibetan or Sanskrit is expected. Exceptions with consent of the instructor.  Daniel Arnold. Winter 2020.

Second-Year Sanskrit: Rdgs. In The Mahabharata

SALC 48400.  (=HREL 36000, SANS 20200).   This sequence begins with a rapid review of grammar learned in the introductory course, followed by readings from a variety of Sanskrit texts. The goals are to consolidate grammatical knowledge, expand vocabulary, and gain confidence in reading different styles of Sanskrit independently. The winter quarter will be a reading of the Mahabharata.  Wendy Doniger. Winter 2020.

Text and World in Medieval India

SALC 48403 (=SALC 28403, SALC 38403). This course is intended as a graduate seminar (undergraduates are welcome to attend, too) concentrating on the cultural and intellectual history of medieval southern Asia.  For the purposes of the course, ‘medieval’ is roughly delimited by the half-millennium 700-1200 CE; ‘southern Asia’ refers mostly to the Indian subcontinent, with collateral attention paid to mainland and insular Southeast Asia. The recurrent focus will be on the reciprocal connections between texts—as physical artifacts, concretizations of cultural knowledge, articulations of traditions of wisdom, and realizations of intentional projects—and the social and physical world of their emergence and circulation.  The class meetings will be divided between thematic and regional topics.  Themes include the royal court, the nature of religious plurality, literary intertextuality, and the nature and efficacy of linguistic reference; regional concentrations include the Tamil country, Pāla-Sena Bengal, Angkor, central Java, and Kashmir. Whitney Cox. Winter 2017.

The Theory And Practice Of Indic Textual Criticism

SALC 48405.   This course will serve as an introduction to the methods of textual criticism, the practice of editorial philology, and the bibliographical nature of the critical edition as they are applicable to premodern South Asia, especially to works in Sanskrit, although other linguistic and textual cultures will also be considered.  The titular difference between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ is not meant as a cliché, and the two weekly sessions will be organized along distinct lines.  In the first meeting, we will read, discuss, and present works that variously introduce, discuss, critique, and exemplify these sorts of textual practices. We will begin with some orientating works on philology more generally (e.g. the guidebooks of Paul Maas and Martin West; Housman’s polemical essays; Timpanaro’s study of Lachmann; Turner’s recent popular history) and proceed to move into more South Asia specific materials from there, including classics (Sukthankar, Katre, M.R. Kavi) as well as contemporary discussions (Pollock, Alam, Kinra, Phillips-Rodriguez).  Big questions will include: in what ways are the methods developed for the classical Mediterranean and European worlds applicable to other textual cultures?  In what ways does this constitute a specifically ‘scientific’ (i.e. transparent, falsifiable) practice of knowledge?  What can be said of the institutional motivations for the production of critical editions, in India or elsewhere? In what ways can information technology transform the editorial project? And, underlying all of these, what do these questions contribute towards an understanding of the ontology of the text in premodern South Asia?

     The second session of each week will be a practicum, in which we will work collectively to edit a Sanskrit text.  This will most likely be a selection from the Cidambaramāhātmya, a twelfth century adjunct to the Skandapurāṇa (Cox 2014), describing the life of the sage Patañjali.  Our understanding of this text, available in a (decidedly uncritical) edition as well as two modern Devanagari-script manuscripts, can be supplemented by a Tamil ‘transcreation’ of perhaps the fifteenth century, which we will access in transliteration alongside an English translation, and an early eighteenth century mahakāvya on the life of the sage, for which the māhātmya may have served as a source. 

      Obviously, some knowledge of Sanskrit would be useful to fully participate in the course, but no more than basic reading skills will be presumed (indeed, knowledge of the Nagari script will suffice to at least know what’s going on).  In addition to participation in class discussion, the course requires one presentation in the ‘theory’ sessions, and a paper or other piece of written work.  This is to be less than 20 pp. in length and could take the form of, for instance, a bibliographical survey of a problem in editorial or philological theory, a critical review essay on an edition, a historiographical critique, or (best of all!) a specimen edition of your own.  Whitney Cox. Spring 2019.

Readings in Tibetan Buddhist Texts

SALC 48501 (=HREL 48910, DVPR 48910).  PQ: Open to students reading Tibetan at the advanced level.  Readings in selected Buddhist doctrinal writings in Tibetan.  Matthew Kapstein, Spring 2019..

Persian Philology and Poetry in South Asia

SALC 48602 (=NEHC 48602, PERS 48602) Prerequisites: intermediate level of Persian. This course offers an introduction to Persian philology as it developed in South Asia during the late Mughal period. Our aim is to observe how Persian was studied as a literary idiom and how poems were read taking grammar as a point of entry. The first sessions will provide an introduction to some fundamental methods and basic terminology of Indo-Persian philology. We will read the short prefaces of two traditional grammars: Anṣārī Jaunpūrī (d. 1225/1810, Murshidabad)’s Qawāʿid-i fārsī and ʿAbd al-Wāsiʿ Hānsawī (fl. 2nd half 17th)’s Risala-yi ʿAbd al-Wāsiʿ. Then, we will look at a selection of examples to see how this grammatical knowledge was used to analyze the language of classical mathnawīs by closely reading the comments made on some verses taken from Jāmī’s Yūsuf o Zulaykhā. After these introductory classes, will focus on Akbar (r. 1556-1605)’s poet laureate (malik al-shuʿarā) Faiḍī’s Nal DamanNal Daman is a mathnawī that is part of an unfinished project of khamsa. The poem is the adaptation of a very popular story found in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata and in several South Asian vernacular versions. In class we will use a 19th-c. lithographed edition of Nal Daman that contains a marginal commentary (ḥāshiya). We will also discuss topics related to the model, the context of the composition and afterlife of Nal Daman, the genre of the mathnawī-i ʿāshiqāna in the multilingual context of South Asia, and the style of Faiḍī’s poetry. Instructors' consent required. Thibaut d'Hubert and Muzaffar Alam, Spring 2017.

South Asian Aesthetics: Rasa to Rap, Kamasutra to Kant

SALC 49300 (=SALC 29300).  This course introduces students to the rich traditions of aesthetic thought in South Asia, a region that includes (among others) the modern-day states of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. By engaging with theories of art, literature and music from the Indic and Indo-Persian traditions, we will attempt to better understand what happens in an aesthetic experience. A central concern will be thinking about how much any aesthetic tradition, be it South Asian or other, is rooted in the particular epistemic and cultural values of the society that produced it; we will therefore explore how ideas from the South Asian tradition can help us to understand not only South Asian material, but art in other societies as well, and to re-think the boundaries of 'aesthetic' thought.  Class discussion, small group work, and individual presentations will be regular features of the class. Two sessions will include performances by, and discussions with, performing artists (dancers and musicians). We will also make one visit to the Art Institute Chicago.  Tyler Williams, Spring.

Colloquium: Historical Time And The Anthropocene

SALC 49404.  (=CHSS 49404, HIST 49404).  The course will review debates in the social sciences and the humanities on the idea of a new geological age of the humans, the so-called Anthropocene, and discuss their implications for historiography and historical thinking. Dipesh Chakrabarty. Spring 2019.

Indian Tantrisms

SALC 50802 (=HREL 50810).  PQ: Background in the study of Indian religions. Description not yet available.  Christian Wedemeyer, Winter.

Recent Work on Self and Non-Self in Indian Philosophy

SALC 51000 (=HREL 53102, DVPR 53102).  PQ:  Indian Philosophy I and II or equivalent; or familiarity with recent treatments of Personal Identity in Anglo-American philosophy. Recent years have seen a considerable body of new scholarship devoted to the problem of personal identity and related topics in Indian and Buddhist philosophy, much of this work now informed by sustained engagement with the treatment of analogous problems in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy (Parfit et al).  The present seminar will take up a selection of recent contributions—by Ganeri, Siderits, and Sorabji, among others-considered in relation both to the Indian sources they interpret and the contemporary discussions that shape their interpretations.  Matthew Kapstein, Winter.