Global Arc

The Mahabharata is considered to be the world's longest epic poem and among the foundational works of South Asian civilization. Students will learn the basic story and characters and read selections from published and unpublished parvans or "major books" of the epic, to understand its cultural context and impact, both historically and across centuries of interpretation. Recent scholarship on the epic's historical, ritual, and mythic contexts will be examined. Course will introduce students to the Indian epics, wider issues of epic scholarship, and the transmission and living performance of epics in South Asia and abroad.

The course explores major myths and narratives of Hindu India. Through mythology and visual art we will look at Indian culture at different historical stages, and at every stage we will observe how the insiders built their relationship with the world, how they understood their place in it, their moral and religious duties, and the right organization of society. We will consider connections between myths and religious practices, social structures, historical events, and psychological and aesthetic dimensions of Indian cultural life. Reading of mythic narratives will be accompanied by analysis from selected theoretical perspectives.

How has the nexus of gender, the performing arts, and aesthetics been theorized, constructed, and experienced at different times and in different places in South Asian societies? What roles have courtesans and courtesan cultures played in artistic and performance traditions in South Asia? In exploring these and related questions we will draw from music, dance, film, literature, and ethnographic and historical sources as we consider the complexities of social and cultural discourses in relation to the performing arts.

This course introduces students to the richness and diversity of South Asian literature produced in vernacular languages and in English. Texts represent major themes and popular trends in the 20th and 21st century; and we discuss them in historical and literary contexts. Topics include cultural renaissance and nationalism; progressive- Marxist literary movement; modernist and experimental literature; feminist, dalit (oppressed castes), and diaspora literature; and various postmodern and contemporary literary trends.

This course is a survey of Islam in the Indian subcontinent. We begin with the earliest Muslim descriptions of India and the rise of Persian poetry to understand how Muslims negotiated life at the frontiers of the Islamic world. Next we trace patterns of patronage and production at the Mughal court and the development of Urdu as a vehicle of literary composition including a discussion of the Progressive Writer's Movement and the "Muslim Social" genre of Hindi cinema. The course concludes with an examination of contemporary novels from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Students will gain an informed perspective on Islam beyond the headlines.

Introduction to mass human displacement by industrial and other projects and the dilemmas of development that this process entails, including country to city migration, unemployment and land acquisition by the state, as well as citizens' resistance. This seminar will help students develop an understanding of, and the tools to study, write and report on development and dissent in their own societies and globally.

This seminar will consider the modern South Asian coastline to understand the past, present, future of coasts in an era of climate change. Historical maritime trade routes, massive development projects, and rising influence of environmental change all shape the South Asian coast as a new frontier of resource control. Students will explore the cultural political desires and discontents that become entangled in coastlines, search for alternative imaginations of life that people mark out on the coastline. In doing so, we move towards an environmental justice perspective of the South Asian coastline.

Introduction to reporting inequality and the major issues arising from its growth within and between societies. Students will develop an understanding of, and the tools to write and report on, inequality in their own societies and globally. Not merely in terms of dramatic events, but also through capturing the processes that drive inequality; and to do so by telling the story through the lives of ordinary, everyday people. Perspectives, tools, theories and writing assignments. Bi-weekly individual meetings with the professor.

We live in uncertain times, marked by ever-escalating crises. It's no surprise that the moment has seen a revival of utopian thought: a casting about for radical solutions, a quest for dramatic reinvention. Historically, utopia has largely been seen as a Western construct. But what models -and by extension potential solutions- does the non-Western world offer? This course examines utopia from a South Asian perspective. Considering a range of examples (the nation state, Maoist revolution, environmental movements, intentional communities), it asks how change occurs, and what cautionary lessons history offers those seeking a more perfect world.