Spring

Time is fundamental to all ideas about the past and our projections to the future, yet our measures and conceptions of it change constantly. We will explore key concepts and themes around the temporal cultures of medieval and modern South Asia and how ideas and everyday experiences of time and history have taken shape in the intellectual exchange between South Asia and the West. What can a bored monk writing in medieval India teach us about our hurried digital life? What was the relationship between past and present in premodern South Asia? 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 read a wide range of texts and other media hailing from both South Asia and the West. Students will analyze secondary and primary sources (in translation): religious works, manuals for time keeping, as well as texts describing personal experiences of time, like novels, diaries, etc. Students will develop critical tools for comparing 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 and history 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

This course will introduce students to the language, genres, and history of literature in the region now known as Rajasthan. Students will gain basic philological skills related to the grammar and vocabulary of the literary languages known as diṅgal and piṅgal and the paleography and codicology of written sources in those languages (stone inscriptions and paper manuscripts), as well as receive a general overview of the various literary traditions of the region. We will read excerpts from works representing different genres; this survey will thus be general rather than comprehensive. We will discuss questions such as the following: what constitutes a ‘language’, literary or otherwise, in precolonial South Asia? What distinguishes a ‘region’ as a geographical and cultural entity? What constitutes a literary genre or ‘tradition’?

From the early 19th century onward, the debate on the 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 will explore 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 discursive 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. The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Basic knowledge of Hindi and/or Urdu is preferable, but not required. We will read works by Nazir Ahmad, Premcand, Jainendra Kumar, Mirza Hadi Ruswa, and Mahadevi Varma in English translation, and also look at texts used in Indian female education at the time.

What is a ‘sense’? How do we attune, coordinate, and interpret our senses and the information that we receive through them? How do we structure and shape the world around us for and through the senses? We will address these questions by diving into the multi-sensory worlds of South Asia—a region that includes the present states of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka—and learning how peoples of the region have theorized and employed the senses to understand and shape their aesthetic, social, and religious worlds. We will taste spices, smell fragrances, listen to music and street sounds, ‘visit’ temples, mosques, and museums, read literary, philosophical, and religious texts, and view works of visual and sculptural art in order to better understand which aspects of sensory experience are indeed ‘universal’ and which are conditioned by history and culture.

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The second quarter analyzes the colonial period (i.e., reform movements, the rise of nationalism, communalism, caste, and other identity movements) up to the independence and partition of India.

This course is for students who have successfully completed third- and fourth-year Urdu. It is typically tailored to student needs in terms of the selection of texts to be addressed and discussed. Depending on their interest, students may choose to read Urdu texts from any time period, country or genre. Prior consent of instructor is required.

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This sequence is a continuation of URDU 10100-10200-10300. There is increased emphasis on vocabulary building and reading progressively more complex texts. Depending on ability levels and interests of the students, readings can include selections from various original sources. Not offered Spr 23