This five-day-a-week introductory sequence presents a dynamic, fun, and lively introduction to the world’s second most spoken language through intensive conversation, reading, writing, and listening. No prior Hindi knowledge necessary.
This sequence is a continuation of First-Year Bangla and aims at gaining intermediate high proficiency in the language. Students who have prior knowledge of elementary Bengali can join the course. The course concentrates equally on speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. At the end of the course the learner is supposed to have a command of Bengali language and culture that allows him/her to communicate with native speakers with ease. He/she will have sufficient reading abilities to comprehend non-technical modern texts. Evaluation will be based on classroom performance, homework assignments, projects, tests, and final examination.
This sequence concentrates on developing skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing Bangla at the novice and intermediate low levels. It is designed both for scholars who want to do research on Bengal and for those who want to gain proficiency in elementary Bangla for communication purposes. Evaluation will be based on classroom performance, attendance, homework assignments, projects, quizzes and final examination.
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.
An introduction to the contexts, methods, and aims of Islamic education in late-Mughal South Asia in the decades immediately prior to European colonisation. Our central focus is an 18th century ‘curriculum’: a list of books that were read by a student of a famous madrasa in late-Mughal Delhi. Although madrasas are now widely considered to be places of strictly ‘religious’ education, our curriculum reveals the wide range of disciplines a student was expected to know. As well as subjects like Qurʾānic commentary and Islamic jurisprudence, students learned Arabic and Persian grammar, ethical texts, Sufism, Hellenistic philosophy, logic, medicine, martial arts, mathematics and geometry, poetry, accounting and secretarial skills, astronomy, as well as alchemical and occult sciences. We will learn with our Mughal-era student, moving through the disciplines that he studied – progressing from the introductory aspects of his education to more advanced subjects. As we go, we will read a wide range of Arabic and Persian primary sources in translation. We will consider what it meant to learn, the contexts in which learning took place, as well as the modes of ethical comportment that education entailed. We will also consider the changing nature of the madrasa curriculum against the background of the volatile political and social climate of 18th century Mughal South Asia. We will also examine the reformist ideas that were challenging classical educational paradigms in this period.
This seminar is an invitation to students to imagine and examine the life-worlds and experiences of South Asian city-dwellers under the aegis of colonialism. Together, we will examine concepts from urban and cultural studies such as spatial politics, domesticity, urban gender dynamics, structure of feelings, life-worlds, public sphere, identity, and sovereignty by addressing the following questions:
• Who were the city-dwellers of colonial India? What were the ways that they made a home in cities whose space and time had largely been shaped by colonial power?
• Whom did the city belong to? What were the ways that marginalized actors like women—sex-workers and women in “purdah,” and men and women of the working-classes staked claim to the city?
• Cities also opened up avenue for education, employment, and social mobility for Indians. How did Indians reconcile these different aspects of the city in their everyday lives?
• There was much internal variation among the different cities. How did cities as different as Calcutta and Delhi, Bombay and Lahore, Banaras and Mysore, look and feel?
• Cities are also spaces of manifold affect. How are these spaces and lives represented in literary and visual texts?
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.
The third quarter considers the processes and consequences of decolonization both in the newly independent nations and the former colonial powers. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. These courses can be taken in any sequence.
