Time and its discontents: thinking and experiencing time in South Asia through the ages

Time is fundamental to all ideas about the past and our projections to the future, yet our measures and conceptions of time change constantly. This class investigates how ideas, debates and everyday experiences of time, history and their periodization have taken shape in the intellectual exchange between South Asia and the West. We will explore key concepts and themes pertaining to the temporal cultures of medieval and modern South Asia, the differences and challenges that these ideas posed to the hegemonic Western world-view and how our modern notions and experiences of time and history were forged in this encounter. What can a bored monk writing in medieval India teach us about our hurried digital life? Was the relationship between past and present in premodern South Asia different from ours? What can we learn about colonialism and capitalism studying work schedules of clerks in colonial India? Was medieval South Asia prior a land without history? From medieval to modern and from Mahābhārata to Marx, we will closely analyze a wide range of texts and other media hailing from both South Asia and the West from different ages. Students will discuss and read secondary and primary sources (in translation); religious works, manuals for time keeping, and ethnographic descriptions of time practices, as well as texts describing temporal cultures and personal experiences of time, like novels, diaries, poetry and journals. Students will develop critical tools for comparing, analyzing and interpreting the life-worlds of non-Western regions; our goal is to think of South Asia as an important site where our current concepts and propositions about time, history, and their reckoning were developed. No prior knowledge of South Asian languages or history is necessary. This online class will offer both synchronous and asynchronous components. See the syllabus at https://bit.ly/3gTLHbX