SALC

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.

What does it mean to speak of literary radicalism? What are the hallmarks of a radical literature? And how does any such body of radical literature relate to the crucial question of empire, while also seeking to not be limited by that address? This course will explore the theme of literary radicalism through perspectives arising from South Asia. Over the twentieth century the subcontinent has been shaped through a wide variety of social and political movements: from anticolonial struggles to communist organising, feminist struggles, anti-caste mobilisation, indigenous protest and more, with their histories intertwining in different ways. We will start with a consideration of some texts on literary radicalism from other parts of the global South by authors such as Julia de Burgos and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, and then move through a detailed discussion of South Asian texts every week to examine particular aspects of literary style and history. We will study texts from a variety of subcontinental languages (in translation, unless originally in English), and across different forms – poetry, short fiction, children’s literature, novels, a memoir, a graphic novel and a documentary film on a poet.

This course aims to provide students an overview of key environmental and ecological issues in the Indian subcontinent. How have the unique precolonial, colonial, regional, and national histories of this region shaped the peculiar nature of environmental issues? We will consider three major concepts—"extinction", "disaster", and "dystopia"—to see how they can be used to frame issues of environmental and ecological concern. Each concept will act as a framing device for issues such as conservation and preservation of wildlife, erasure of adivasi (first dwellers) ways of life, environmental justice, water scarcity, and climate change. The course will aim to develop students' ability to assess the specificity of these concepts in different disciplines. For example: What methods and sources will an environmental historian use to write about wildlife? How does this differ from the approach an ecologist or literary writer might take? Students will analyze various media, both literary and visual, such as autobiographies of shikaris (hunters), graphic novels, photographs, documentary films, ethnographic accounts, and environmental history.

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.

"The Shahnameh, the Persian ""Book of Kings,"" is generally classed as an epic or national epic. While it does not lack for battling champions and heroic saga, it also includes episodes in a variety of disparate genres and themes: creation narrative, mythology, folk tale, romance, royal chronicle, and political history.
In this course we gain familiarity with the style and language of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh by slow reading and discussion of select episodes in Persian, in tandem with a reading of the whole text in English translation. We approach the work as a foundational text of Iranian identity,; compendium of pre-Islamic mythology and lore; a centrifugal axis of Persianate civilization and Iranian monarchical tradition throughout Anatolia, Central Asia and South Asia; and as an instance of ""world literature."" We will read with an eye toward literary structure; genre; Indo-Iranian mythology; political theory and commentary; character psychology; ideals of masculinity, femininity and heroism; the interaction of text, oral tradition, illustration, scholarship, and translation in the shaping of the literary reception of the Shahnameh; and, of course, the meaning(s) of the work. We also address wider issues of textual scholarship: the sources of the Shahnameh, the scribal transmission of Ferdowsi’s text, and the production of modern critical editions and theories of textual editing.
Class discussions will be in English.

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 will involve close philosophical attention to a representative range of Indian Madhyamaka texts.

The first quarter focuses on Islam in South Asia, Hindu-Muslim interaction, Mughal political and literary traditions, and South Asia’s early encounters with Europe.