This introductory course will provide an outline of major events and themes in Indian history, from the Mughal Empire in the 16th century to the re-emergence of India as a global player in the 21st century. The course will discuss the following themes: society and economy in Mughal India; global trade between India and the West in the 17th century; the rise of the English East India Company's control over Indian subcontinent in the 18th century; its emergence and transformation of India into a colonial economy; social and religious reform movements in the 19th century; the emergence of elite and popular anti-colonial nationalisms; independence and the partition of the subcontinent; the emergence of the world's largest democracy; the making of an Indian middle class; and the nuclearization of South Asia.

The purpose of this course is to present a variety of narrative genres and to discuss and illustrate the modes whereby they can be analyzed. We will be looking at shorter types of narrative: short stories, novellas, and fables, and also some extracts from longer works such as autobiographies. While some works will come from the Anglo-American tradition, a larger number will be selected from European and non-Western cultural traditions and from earlier time-periods. The course will thus offer ample opportunity for the exploration of the translation of cultural values in a comparative perspective.

This course introduces students to the extraordinary quality of literary production during the past four millennia of South Asian civilization. We will read texts in translation from all parts of South Asia up to the sixteenth century. We will read selections from hymns, lyric poems, epics, wisdom literature, plays, political works, and religious texts.

The East India Company established its first trading outpost in India in 1612 and by 1765, was granted the right to collect revenue in eastern India on behalf of the Mughal Emperor. By 1858, Queen Victoria was Empress of India and by 1947, two independent nation states had emerged upon decolonization, India and Pakistan. The course will familiarize students with the outlines of the history of colonial South Asia, while exploring the following themes: How do we know what we know as historians, about the colonial era? What new institutions emerged in India under the British and, more importantly, what older institutions did they replace or modify? What kinds of modernity did South Asians begin to embrace, and what was the role of colonial rule in shaping and constraining these changes? How did different groups of South Asians perceive and respond to colonial rule, and how did this shape the emergence of new political movements in the early twentieth century?

This course will serve as an introduction to frameworks for studying gender and sexuality through the lens of early modern South Asian history, literature, and art, covering what are today the countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Taking the fundamental questions of “what is gender?” and “what is sexuality?” as our starting point, we will examine the diversity of social practices and beliefs related to these concepts expressed in early modern South Asian writings and visual art, as well as how this past relates to contemporary debates, in contexts including Hindu mystical traditions, Islamic courtly culture, and early colonial society. The course will emphasize direct engagement with primary sources ranging from memoirs, legal documents and advice manuals to mystical tales, satirical poetry, and paintings. Topics covered include formulations of masculinity and femininity, notions of the home and the family, representations of queer sex and desire, and conceptualizations of the categories of intersex and transgender. Students will complete the course with an understanding of comparative lenses for thinking about gender and sexuality in addition to proficiency in applying and interpreting those lenses in relation to a variety of sources, from literature to technical prose to visual culture. No prior knowledge of South Asian history, languages or literature is required.

This seminar locates performance in modern India – understood here as music, theatre, and dance – in the context of its social production and the production of its value. On the one hand, the course builds on perspectives drawn from Marx, Bourdieu, and others, and on the other, it examines themes of social hierarchy, taste habits, labor and corporeal exertion, and caste to think about the braiding of the arts and politics in modern India. A primary objective of the course is to de-center earlier nationalist-inflected histories about the arts in modern India, and bridge new thinking on performance across diverse forms of knowledge and critical methods.
The seminar revolves around a number of significant questions for the study of culture in modern India. How does the modern Indian nation-state mediate and mold taste-habits and hierarchies? How do we historicize the making of the hierarchy of so-called “classical” and “folk” performance in modern India? How can we think of the arts as commodities of exchange and vessels of capital in the context of the majoritarian state? To what extent do late nineteenth and early twentieth-century “reform” and projects of cultural reinvention undergird the contemporary practice of these arts, particularly in the age of the majoritarian Hindu state? How do Dalit-Bahujan and minority religious communities claim their pasts and engage in articulatory practices that stage new modes of identity and resistance?

This course surveys the culture, religion and history of India from 2500 BCE to 1200 CE. The course examines the major cultural, religious and social factors that shaped the course of early Indian history. The following themes will be covered: the rise and fall of Harappan civilization, the "Aryan Invasion" and Vedic India, the rise of cities, states and the religions of Buddhism and Jainism, the historical context of the growth of classical Hinduism, including the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the development of the theistic temple cults of Saivism and Vaisnavism, processes of medieval agrarian expansion and cultic incorporation as well as the spread of early Indian cultural ideas in Southeast Asia. In addition to assigned secondary readings students will read select primary sources on the history of religion and culture of early India, including Vedic and Buddhist texts, Puranas and medieval temple inscriptions. Major objectives of the course will be to draw attention to India's early cultural and religious past and to assess contemporary concerns and ideologies in influencing our understanding and representation of that past.

This course focuses on the key themes of protest and resistance in contemporary South Asian literarure. Most South Asian countries have been witnessing an endless wave of protests and resistance from various sections of public life for the last three decades. In India, for example, protest literature emerges not only from traditionally marginalized groups (the poor, religious and ethnic minorities, depressed castes and tribal communities), but also from upper-caste groups, whose protest literature expresses concerns over economic oppression, violence and the denial of fundamental rights. Literature is becoming an immediate tool to articualte acts of resistance and anger, as many writers and poets are also taking on new roles as poitical activists. In this class, we will read various contemporary works of short fiction, poetry and memoirs to comprehend shifts in public life toward political and social activism in South Asia. We will also watch two or three documentaries that focus on public protests and resistance. No pre-requisites or South Asian language requirements. All literary works will be read in English translations.

An introduction to the tabla, the premier drum of north Indian and Pakistani classical music traditions.

This course will take the student through the major topics of Indian philosophy by first introducing the fundamental concepts and terms that are necessary for a deeper understanding of themes that pervade the philosophical literature of India -- arguments for and against the existence of God, for example, the ontological status of external objects, the means of valid knowledge, standards of proof, the discourse on the aims of life. The readings will emphasize classical Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical articulations (from 700 B.C.E to 16th century CE) but we will also supplement our study of these materials with contemporary or relatively recent philosophical writings in modern India.