These are the undergraduate-level SALC courses that are being offered this academic year.
Autumn 2025
SALC 22709/32709; CHSS 32790; HIPS 22790 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 [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the history of Sri Lanka’s war and ethnic conflict through literature, film and music in addition to political and historical documents.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.
SALC 20106/40106; HIST 46606 Research Themes in South Asian Studies: Textual Transformations - From Manuscript to Print – Ulrike Stark
This course offers an introduction to the theory and practice of book history and print culture studies, a relatively recent and vibrant field of inquiry in 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 book history in South Asia. 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 colonial rule, material cultures of the book, the economy of the book trade, popular print, and readership and consumption. We will also engage with texts as material artifacts and look at the changing contexts, techniques, and practices of book production in the transition from manuscript to print.
SALC 21353/ 31353; RLST 27306 Tibetan Literature in Translation - Karma Ngodup
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to Tibetan literature in English translation, spanning a wide array of genres such as religious biographies, visionary writings, epic poetry, oral folklore, drama, and contemporary fiction. Students will engage critically with translated texts while examining the historical, religious, and cultural contexts in which they emerged. Special attention will be given to the dynamics of translation, including the interpretive choices and challenges of rendering Tibetan literary voices into English. Key themes include narrative and memory in Tibetan Buddhist traditions, gender and power, the transmission of oral and literary forms, and the emergence of modern Tibetan literary expressions. No prior knowledge of Tibetan is required. The course is ideal for students interested in Himalayan cultures, Buddhist studies, comparative literature, or translation studies.
SALC 25720/ NEHC 25720/ RLST 27520/ Eros, Religion and Poetry: the Ghazal - Shariq Khan
The ghazal is one of the oldest genres of poetry that continues to thrive to this day. This course examines ghazals across multiple languages, with a focus on the Persian and Urdu tradition. We will learn how to read a ghazal, as well as how not to read one. We will meet a large number of ghazal poets, and the many kinds of things for which they use this remarkably adaptable genre. We will also consider significant events in the ghazal's long life, especially the threat it faced in the face of colonial modernity, as well as its spectacular survival. Finally, we will consider the place of the ghazal within Islamic lifeworlds, exploring the connection between the ghazal's poetics and questions of truth, ethics, and religion, challenging the category of the "literary" itself.
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 [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.
SALC 25340/ CHDV 25340/ CMLT 25340/ EDSO 25340/ HIST 26705/ HMRT 25340/ RDIN 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.
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 21354/ DEMS 21354/ HIST 21354 Democrazy! Politics in postcolonial India - Titas De Sarkar
India is famously known as the world’s largest democracy. This course investigates what constitutes democracy in the Global South, the preconditions that have informed its development in India over the last seven decades, and the impossibility of a unidimensional definition for a phenomenon that affects the lives of one and a half billion people every day. We will take up themes which address the elements that goes into the creation of a democratic state – such as the constitution and elections; governance and international relations; law and questions of identity; people and popular culture. With each category, we will ask – What is so distinctively democratic about it? How does it relate to and deviate from conventional understanding of democracy (that is, the rule of the people)? How are they informed by India’s colonial and precolonial past? Who are the stake holders of such democracy and whose voice remains marginalized in the process? By attending to some of the most crucial events in independent India – from wars, Emergency, globalization, and emergence of varying shades of political ideologies – we will collectively seek to understand the many lives of democracy that exists from the corridors of the parliament house to a roadside tea stall. In the process, we hope to grasp the extent of the heterogeneity of postcolonial India.
SALC 22707/32707, HIST 25910/35910, NEHC 22727/32727 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 25041/35041; CMST 25041/35041; HIST 26908/36908); GNSE 25041 Cinemas of the Global South - Rochona Majumdar (SALC, CMS), Daniel Morgan (CMS)
This course focusing on “world cinema” from Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, includes an array of cinematic forms—films and other moving-image media, cultural artifacts, viewing practices, even theories themselves— that took shape amongst and between these areas. Combining viewings and readings, archival research and theoretical translations, we will explore the vibrant forms and circulation of cinema outside its imperial nodes. The course focuses on three historical moments in South Asia, Latin America, and Africa: the “global sixties” and its revolutionary ambitions; the politics of domestic spaces in the 1980s and early 1990s; and contemporary negotiations of gender, sexuality, and migration.
SALC 23707/ 33707; GNSE 23193/ 33193 We Sinful Women: Voices of Resistance in Urdu Literature - Romeena Kureishy
This interdisciplinary course examines the works of contemporary women writers in Urdu literature, focusing on how their voices articulate resistance against patriarchy, political oppression, and sociocultural constraints. Through poetry, prose, critical essays, and film, the course explores the ways these writers challenge traditional norms, redefine gendered identities, and inspire change. Using feminist and postcolonial theoretical frameworks, students will analyze the impact of these works within the South Asian context and beyond.
SALC 21355/ HIST 26619 Early Modern Southern Asia: The Mughal World - Shariq Khan
This course explores the historical evolution of South Asian civilization between about 1000 and 1800 A.D., with a particular focus on the history of Islam and the Mughal world in the South Asian context. The course will situate several historical issues within a broad chronological framework, using a combination of secondary writings and primary-source readings. Throughout the course, we will consider how a diverse range of sources—from objects, paintings, and architecture to poetry, tales, autobiographies, and government circulars—from this period illuminate our understanding of political, social, and cultural environments in Mughal South Asia. The course will be conducted through both lecture and discussion. Along with history, we will also place an almost equal emphasis on historiography and the theory of history—in other words, on how we actually do history. So along with learning about what happened, we will also learn to think about how we find out what happened, and how these pasts are represented or misrepresented, and remembered or forgotten.
SALC 26075/ SIGN 26075/ ARCH 26075 Sense and Sensorium in South Asia (and Beyond) - 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.
