These are the undergraduate-level SALC courses that are being offered this academic year.
Autumn 2024
SALC 22705: Oceanic Islam in the Age of Empire
Instructor: Taimur Reza
This course explores Muslim lives within this palimpsest of networks, set against the horizon of the Indian Ocean world. Tracing Oceanic Islam, it covers a vast territory along the Indian Ocean rim, including Tanzania and Zanzibar on the Swahili Coast; Mecca and Aden in the Middle East; port cities in British India; and the Straits Settlements and the Dutch Indies in Southeast Asia. How did the unprecedented proliferation of linkages-enabled by seafaring steamboats-between distant Muslim societies and between Muslims and non-Muslims reshape the understanding of Islam, of Muslim identity, and the reality they inhabited? What happened to Islamic cosmopolitanism when it encountered new European ideas, lifestyles, and cultures? What can Oceanic Islam reveal in contrast to Land Islam? These are some of the questions we explore in this course combining textual and visual sources, culled from modern scholarship and primary literature.
SALC 24000: Language, Power, Identity: The Hindi-Urdu Controversy in Historical Perspective
Instructor: Ulrike Stark
Central to the cultural politics of nineteenth-century North India, the language debate over Hindi and Urdu has been viewed both as an instance of Hindu-Muslim elite competition over economic and political power and as an ideological process of identity formation in which language and script became charged cultural and political symbols. This course traces the history of the Hindi-Urdu controversy from its local beginnings in the North-Western Provinces of British India in the 1830s to the debates over the national language of India and Pakistan in the years leading up to Independence. We will explore the role of prominent figures and institutions in the divisive process in which Hindi came to be exclusively identified with Hindus, and Urdu with Muslims. Paying close attention to a variety of primary sources, we will discuss the cultural, political, and socioeconomic implications of the language debate in the context of Indian nationalism and Muslim separatism.
Winter 2025
SALC / CMST / CCCT / 20122, 30122; GNSE 20142/30142; HIST 26616/36616: From Bollywood to Made in Heaven
Instructor Rochona Majumdar (11:00am-1:50pm TH, Screenings on Mon 3:30pm-6:30pm at Cobb 307)
From reality shows like Indian Matchmaking and Made in Heaven to the meme of the "Big Fat Indian Wedding" to the preoccupations of Bollywood films like DDLJ and Rocky aur Rani ki Prem Kahani and crossover ones such as Monsoon Wedding, marriage is an obsession in South Asian culture. Focusing on Hindi cinema, this course will explore the socio-political dynamics of this cultural focus on marriage and couple formation. With examples ranging from classical Hindi films from the 1950s–60s to the star-studded melodramas of 1970s and 1980s and the “new Bollywood” era (post-1991), this cinema exhibited and analyzed the central dynamics of marriage: sexual compatibility, fidelity, reproductive futures, and so on. Debates around class, caste, diaspora, and sexuality are equally anchored in issues of marriage and couple formation. In this course, we ask why it is that marriage—its success and failure—has been so central to Indian on-screen identities. Even as screens multiply—on computers, cell phones, and in the multiplex—marriage continues to dominate. No prior knowledge of Indian languages is required, but you must enjoy watching and talking about movies and popular culture.
SALC 20100/ ANTH 204101 / HIST 10800 / MDVL 20100 / SOSC 23000 Introduction to the Civilizations of South Asia I
Instructors: Andrew Ollett (Section 1) Tue Thu 3:30pm-4:50pm, Titas De Sarkar (Section 2) Mon Wed 1:30pm-2:50pm
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 25400/35400 That Age-old Debate: Youth Cultures in Modern India
Instructor: Titas De Sarkar (Tue Thu 2pm-3:20pm)
In this course, we will aim to gain a deeper understanding of how certain key moments in postcolonial India – from innumerable student protests to an economic transition to globalization, and from the meteoric rise of Bollywood to the omnipresence of social media – have shaped the youth of the country and how young people in turn have been at the forefront of some of the major events and have created history on their own terms. We will ask what these experiences have done to concepts and notions of the youth. In other words, if youth is a construct like gender and caste then how was it constructed over the last seventy odd years? What were the desires and anxieties of the larger society that have shaped very distinctive trajectories for the youth in India? How were young people fashioning themselves and carving out their own social spaces? As we progress through the quarter, we will keep two guiding questions in mind – who all are considered to be the youth in postcolonial India? And – what are the lived experiences of young people during this time? The ever changing, seemingly arbitrary, and conflicting definitions of youth in government reports, commercial advertisements, or popular culture demands a thorough analysis of this significant and impact-making category inside out.
SALC 26200/36200 Writing, Reading, and Singing in Bengal, 8th to 19th AD
Instructor: Thibaut d'Hubert
The course offers an introduction to the literary traditions of Bengal (West Bengal in India, and Bangladesh). We will study the making of Bengal as a region of literary production through a selection of secondary literature and primary sources in translation. We will look at how literature and literacy have been defined in various contexts up to the colonial period and discuss what constituted the literary identity of Bengal's various linguistic traditions. We will approach the topics of reading practices and genres from the perspective of both material culture and the conceptual categories underlying literary genres and the linguistic economy of Bengal (scholastic and non-scholastic, classical and vernacular languages, individual reading and publicly performed texts, hinduyani and musalmani, etc. …). Even if Bengali language and literature stand at the center of this course, we will also discuss the literary traditions that predate the formation of Bengali literature and were part of the background of the making of Bengali texts (i.e. Sanskrit, Apabhramsha, Arabic, Persian, Maithili, and Awadhi literature). The aim of the course is to introduce students to pre- and early-colonial Bengali literature in its conceptual, aesthetic, and historical dimensions. The course will address topics of interest for students in comparative literature, religious studies, history, linguistics, as well as medieval studies, book history, musicology or performance studies.
SALC 20123: Orientalism
Instructor: Andrew Ollett (Tue Thu 2pm-3:30pm)
In 1978, Edward Said transformed “Orientalism” from a somewhat innocent term for a fascination with the cultures of the Orient into a label for a “discursive formation” that systematically objectified, essentialized, and distorted the non-West in the service of Western ideology and power. His intervention provoked a number of responses: some critiqued the critique, on empirical or theoretical grounds; some extended his analysis, which was based primarily on the Middle East, to other “Orients”; some argued that his critique did not go far enough. We will examine Said’s Orientalism, some important precursors in the critique of Orientalist knowledge, and a selection of responses to Said’s work, with a focus on theoretical questions. Why do the overarching structures of knowledge change so slowly when it comes to the non-West, and why, at the same time, does “knowledge” about the non-West appear so compromised when we examine it a century or so after it is produced? What are the rules of the “discursive formation” Said claimed to have identified? On what basis can a critique of an entire “way of knowing” be justified and undertaken? How does Orientalism reframe the Baconian cliché that “knowledge is power”? In the end, what is the epistemic and political status of “knowledge of the non-West”?
Spring 2025
SALC 27904: Wives, Widows, and Prostitutes: Indian Literature and the "Women's Question"
Instructor: Ulrike Stark
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.
SALC 20200 / ANTH 24102 / HIST 10900 / SOSC 23100: Introduction to the Civilizations of South Asia II
Instructors: Dipesh Chakrabarty (Section 1) Tue Thu 3:30pm-4:50pm, Titas De Sarkar (Section 2) Mon Wed 1:30pm-2:50pm
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 26075 / ARCH 26075 / SIGN 26075: South Asian Sensoriums
Instructor 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.
SALC 20401: The Mahābhārata
Instructor: Whitney Cox
The Mahābhārata is conventionally said to be fifteen times the length of the Bible, or eight times the combined texts of the Homeric epics and, as Wendy Doniger once quipped, "a hundred times more interesting". No other work of the Indic narrative imagination is as capacious; arguably no work of the imagination anywhere, ever. The most important monument of early Indian civilization, it is an amalgam of heroic poetry, visionary speculation, hairsplitting philosophical analysis, austere legal disputation, animal fables, and dirty jokes. In this course, we will read (in translation) the monumental Sanskrit epic, as well as some of its many mediations—whether in vernacular literary renditions, centuries of sculptural and pictorial representations, or contemporary film and comic adaptations— with an eye to how we might consider this work as both a fundamental text for the understanding of South Asia and a vital part of the global cultural commons. No knowledge of South Asia or of any Indian language is presumed; the course will be a combination of lectures, small group discussions, and collective efforts at understanding this inexhaustible work.
SALC 25600/35600 Occult powers: divinatory and magical sciences in the Indian and Islamicate worlds
Instructor: Jean Arzoumanov
This course offers a historical survey of occult sciences and practices in regions spanning from the Arab world to South Asia and focuses on the medieval and early modern periods. Far from being marginal, practices pertaining to what is now seen as the supernatural realm, such as magic and divination, were classified as sciences by reputable scholars, were sponsored by rulers, and had their specific written corpus and techniques. The practice of the occult also involved vernacular disciplines practiced by healers and fortune tellers for any client seeking help or advice. This course will look at a vast range of written and visual sources on subjects ranging from astrology, alchemy and magical cures, subjugation of planets and spirits, yogic superpowers, bibliomancy (book divination), oneiromancy (dream divination), physiognomy, letterism, charm making. It will look at the dynamics of cultural transfers as occult sciences were borrowed and adapted from the Greek to the Arab world and back to Latin Europe, and from Sanskrit to Persian in the Indian subcontinent.
SALC 25700/35700 Creative Forces: Cultural Feminisms in Postcolonial India
Instructor: Titas De Sarkar
In this course, we will study some of the most significant feminist interventions that were made through a range of cultural practices in postcolonial India, and in the Indian diaspora. Struggles for women’s rights, demanding political empowerment and economic equality, or carrying out demonstrations for better access to health and education have a long history in South Asia. We will focus particularly on the cultural practices that have constituted waves of feminist thoughts over the last seven decades. We will explore how concerns around justice, social responsibility, and freedom of expression are mediated through literature, cinema, music, and self-fashioning. Keeping cultural productions as our archive, we will ask – what are the various meanings of feminism in postcolonial India? What were the political, economic, and social concerns that the artists and activists chose to highlight while addressing gendered inequalities? What are the intersections of caste, class, and sexual orientation that complicate our understanding of feminist representations? How were inequities sought to be negotiated creatively at different historical contexts? Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we will often find ourselves moving between genres, themes, and disciplines to locate marginal voices responding to contemporary anxieties. By working at the intersection of cultural history, anthropological and sociological scholarships, and media studies we will gain an understanding of the plurality of feminist ideas transmitted through specific cultural mediums. In the process, we will be able to redefine aspects of the history of independent India and appreciate distinctive forms of feminist practice that continue to emerge from the global South.