SAST5580 - Monument, Memory, and Place in South Asia

Drawing on the archaeology and landscape history of South Asia, this seminar explores place-making and social geographies as they play out through a series of inter-related themes: situated history, embodiment, monumentality, social memory, and appropriation. We consider approaches to site, monument, and image as experienced and construed through audience, circumstance, and politics; and how these conditions both inform and transform the meaningful construction of place, commemoration, and heritage. This discussion sets the stage for a broader consideration of the politics of heritage in contemporary South Asia.