These are the undergraduate-level SALC courses that are being offered this academic year.
Autumn 2025
SALC 22709/32709 Science and Technology in Modern South Asia – Amanda Lanzillo
Is modern science an imperial project? How did people who lived under colonial rule reshape and remake imperial scientific projects? And might scientific and technological trajectories that are often associated with the “West” also have relied on knowledge from elsewhere? In this course, we explore these questions and others in the context of modern South Asian history. Themes explored in the course include imperial ecological impacts, the intersections of European and South Asian medical traditions, and the impact of caste and gender-hierarchies on scientific and technological knowledge production. We especially emphasize the varied South Asian social and cultural contexts in which science and technology were produced and used, asking how local meaning was assigned to knowledge that circulated globally.
SALC 25340 Coming-of-Age in South Asia: ‘The Child’ in Colonial and Postcolonial Imaginaries – Titas Bose
In 1900, the Swedish feminist sociologist, Ellen Key wrote a book called The Century of the Child, anticipating the age when “childhood” as a social construct would universally come under unprecedented legal, cultural and political scrutiny. Taking a cue from Key’s influential and provocative work, this course explores how the “child” became the center of many social, cultural, religious and educational controversies in the history of modern South Asia. We will examine how “childhood” with an accompanying notion of "infantilization", was not only a potent concept in questions of empire, civilization and racial hierarchies, but also one that still gets invoked in contemporary conversations about “development” and “progress”. Being a concept loaded with discourses of power, “childhood” lends itself to ideologically inconsistent formations. On one hand, we will see how colonial educational policies, nationalist reckonings and postcolonial reconstructions have variously positioned the “normative child” as the future of the nation, society and family. On the other hand, we will note how children, whose lives do not follow the normative codes, could be perceived as unchildlike, vis-à-vis their class, caste and gender identities. By centering the figure of the “child”, we will examine how children’s literature, textbooks, biographies, short stories, photographs, advertisements and comics could be important sources for rethinking institutions, social systems and cultural genres of South Asia.
SALC [35710/25710] Sri Lanka’s war and ethnic conflict in Tamil culture – Sascha Ebeling
The island nation of Sri Lanka has been tormented by one of the bloodiest and most protracted ethnic conflicts in modern history, leading between 1983 and 2009 to a civil war in which the minority Tamil population fought for its rights and survival. During this time, Tamil writers commented on all aspects of the conflict and recorded their experiences and memories, their political opinions and, time and again, their hope for peace and for a new life in exile. In this class, we will study the history of Sri Lanka’s war and ethnic conflict through literature, film and music in addition to political and historical documents. Our sources will cover the earliest literary expressions of Sri Lankan Tamil ethnic consciousness and nationalism at the dawn of the twentieth century to the post-war literature and culture of the present day; novels, poems, op-eds, parliamentary debates and propaganda pieces; the work of Hindu, Muslim and Christian authors and artists resident in Sri Lanka and South India as well as diasporic artists from around the world (e.g. Canada, France, Germany, and Australia). No prior knowledge of Tamil or Sri Lanka is required. While all readings will be in English (translation), students of Tamil will also be able to study the texts in the original.
Winter 2026
SALC 20100/ ANTH 204101 / HIST 10800 / MDVL 20100 / SOSC 23000 Introduction to the Civilizations of South Asia I
This course introduces students to the literature, art, and thought of Southern Asia from 3000 BCE to 1530 CE. It includes the origins and development of several major world religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism) and the spread of languages of learning and culture (Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali and Persian) throughout much of Southern Asia. The course is organized both chronologically and by the regions where important developments took place, taking us from Afghanistan to Indonesia.
SALC 22708/32708 Islam in South Asia – Max Bruce
This annual seminar for upper-division undergraduate and graduate students focuses on key works relevant to the study of Islam in a South Asian context. The thematic and historical focus of the course changes each year. Some versions of the course operate as theory-and-method courses that introduce students to an area of significant debate in the academic literature. Others survey approaches to a particular theme of importance in Islamic Studies with a focus on South Asia. Others read works of Islamic literature in translation alongside secondary scholarship. The course is English-medium. Familiarity with Islam and the history of South Asia will be helpful but is not required.
SALC [35711/25711] 2000+ years of Tamil poetry: From Love and War to Hip Hop – Sascha Ebeling
Tamil is one of only a few modern, living languages with a literary tradition reaching back over two millennia. Since the 1980s, Tamil writing has become truly global, with Tamil communities across Asia, Europe, North America and the rest of the world. In this class, we will explore the breadth and depth of Tamil’s literary cultures and geographies, beginning with the ancient poems of love and war (Sangam poetry) written before the Christian era and ending with the lyrics of contemporary hip hop artists from Malaysia and Switzerland. Readings will also include the famous “classics”, e.g. poems of the religious devotional tradition (bhakti), temple myths, and epic poetry, as well as modern and contemporary poetry about politics, caste, class, gender and feminism, India’s Independence, Sri Lanka’s civil war and life in Singapore. The class is open to anyone interested in exploring one of the extraordinary literary traditions of the world. No prior knowledge of Tamil or South Asia is required. While all readings will be in English (translation), students of Tamil will also be able to study the texts in the original.
Spring 2026
SALC 20200 / SALC 30200 / ANTH 24102 / HIST 10900 / SOSC 23100: Introduction to the Civilizations of South Asia II
This course will focus on major issues and developments in the political, social, and cultural history of modern South Asia. Picking up where the first course in this sequence left off, we will look at the onset of European colonial rule in the subcontinent and the transformations engendered by this encounter. Tracking reformist and nationalist movements along vectors of caste and gender, the course will culminate in the long processes of decolonization from the mid-twentieth century onwards that resulted in the formation of new nation-states. Focusing on people, ideas, and movements, the aim of this course is to critically scrutinize the idea of South Asian Civilizations to ask what lessons, if any, it offers for the twenty-first century.
SALC 22707/32707 Afghanistan in Global History – Amanda Lanzillo
From the consolidation of European imperial control in South and Central Asia through the present day, Afghanistan has featured in the global imagination of empire. It has been called a “buffer state,” “the graveyard of empires,” and the land of the “great game.” But how have Afghans experienced these global historical currents in their homeland? In this course, we trace the history of global and imperial engagement with Afghanistan, as well as Afghans’ own articulations of their history, society, and culture, with particular attention to Afghan experiences of British, Soviet, and US intervention. We ask how external global powers imagined Afghanistan and sought to use that imaginary to establish regional authority. Equally, we study how Afghans responded to global geopolitical claims and developed their own historical narratives that exceed the simplified narratives developed by many global powers.
SALC 26075 / ARCH 26075 / SIGN 26075 South Asian Sensoriums – Tyler Williams
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.