Spring 2017

This course explores landscape and memory in South Asia, with a focus on Bengal. Landscapes evoke wonder and nostalgia on the one hand, and exploitation, displacement, and cultural appropriation on the other. How do the communities whose livelihoods and ways of life depend on the soil, the water, or the forest respond to the forces of political, social, and environmental change? How are their voices imagined, written, heard, or read? We will look at landscape in relation to conflicting constructions of the “folk,” the dalit (“oppressed”) and the adibasi (indigenous), the “traditional” and the “modern.”

Love and longing in the new Indian novel
 

In this course, we will study the theme of love and longing in the new Indian novel. The new Indian novel is a diverse genre that houses urban tales, pulp, graphic novels, and other literary forms. These stories, written by established and upcoming authors such as Chetan Bhagat, Sarnath Banerjee, Arvind Adiga, Jeet Thayil, and others writing in English, show how love shapes everyday life in rapidly changing urban and semi-urban India today. In distinct ways, these novels give us a taste of love and longing in the new India—a heady mix of development, poverty, glitz, addiction, violence, toxicity, and politics.

This course is an introduction to the cultures, histories, and literatures of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and East Timor, nations that comprise an area known traditionally as the Malay World. Grounding ourselves in the classical kingdoms of Southeast Asia through the coming of Islam and the early modern era, we will pay particular attention to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the entrenchment of European and American imperialism, the rise of Southeast Asian nationalism, and developments in modern Southeast Asia up through the aftermath of the fall of Marcos, Soeharto, and Mahathir. We will analyze the role that history, and especially “classical” history, plays in modern Southeast Asia. We will discuss the place of religion, of Islam and Roman Catholicism, in private and political life, situating insular Southeast Asia both within a global and a regional Southeast Asian context. These themes will be introduced, as much as possible, through works of fiction and primary source materials in translation. The course has a research component—methods for conducting original research and use of library collections will lead to a focused research paper. Readings will include fiction by Jose Rizal, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Lat, Sonny Liew, Muhammad Radjab, Eka Kurniawan, and Carlos Bulosan, and scholarly writings by Clifford Geertz, James Scott, and Benedict Anderson. 

What is the relationship between literary representation and the "real world" in South Asian literature?  What assumptions about truth, art and language are implied in this question?  This class looks at over 2000 years of reflection on this question in both literature and literary and linguistic theory produced in the scholarly and literary traditions of South Asia.  We will also draw on texts from the Euro-American tradition on topics ranging from mimesis to performativity and magical language in order to have a better understanding of concerns shared across linguistic and geographic boundaries as well as the diverse cultural and historical contexts that produced a particular theoretical framework.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

This introductory level course focuses on progressive acquisition of language skills to communicate effectively in both written and spoken Tamil. It facilitates development of Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing competence along with basic grammar.

Prerequisite :  Completion of fall semester Tamil  1A / Instructor’s consent.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.

Students may not take language courses at a lower level than they have been assessed at, nor than the level of other courses in the same language that they have successfully completed previously.