Global Arc

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.

An introduction to the cinematic tradition of Russia and the Soviet Union. This course will offer close, contextualized, and comparative analysis of major Russian films from the 1920s to the present. We will examine the films in terms of their formal structures and their reception, and in light of the epochal social, political and cultural changes that took place over Russia's last, turbulent century. Filmmakers to be studied include Eisenstein, Vertov, Tarkovsky, Sokurov, Zvyagintsev, and others. No prior knowledge of Russian culture or language is required.

In this course, we will discuss ghost stories written by prominent Russian writers. We will also discuss various representations of the supernatural phenomena in Western and Russian spirit photography, music, and film. We will consider the concept of the apparition as a cultural myth which tells us about the "hidden side" of the Russian historical imagination and about political and ideological conflicts which have haunted Russian society from the 18th c. to our days. The class is designed as a series of *intellectual seances* focused on a certain work considered within a broad historical context. All readings will be in English translation.

This course will investigate the complex inter-relationships between politics, ideology, and aesthetics, and consider whether it is only governments and the policies they make that have the power to coerce artistic production, or whether artists can shape politics and ideology as well. In short: What does it mean for art to be political? The primary historical focus will be on Russian art before, during, and after the Bolshevik revolution, but comparative geo-historical cases will also be considered.

This course explores symbolic mechanisms and daily practices through which post-Soviet identities are constructed in contemporary Russia. We will look closely at such key concepts and institutions as ideology, space, crime, generation, and gender. What are the cultural contexts in which new identities emerge in today's Russia? What are the social, economic and cultural practices that influence this identity-construction process? To what extent does the Soviet cultural legacy still define the post-Soviet identity? Through fiction, film, and academic studies of post-Soviet life, we will analyze how Russia is being transformed.

In this course we will discuss Soviet film in the context of Soviet society. Film was at the center of Soviet culture, the intersection of its ideals with its historical and social realities, its human catastrophes with its inhuman utopias. Despite the pressures put on film makers, the Soviet film industry managed to produce one of the great cinematic traditions of the twentieth century. The course will highlight these achievements, situating them in broader discussions about art, politics, and society.