Instructor: Dr. Tabinda M. Khan
Email: tmahfooz@colmex.mex
Class Hours: Tues and Thurs, 12-2pm
Office Hours: I will be available to meet by appointment.
Course Description:
South Asia, a region that comprises 8 countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and the Maldives), and more than 20% of the world’s population, has also had a tumultuous history, marked by colonialism, partition, mass displacement, and violence. In this course, our first question will be to ask where the term “South Asia” comes from. Like the borders and nationalisms that divide the states of the region, it too is a construct. Therefore, we will first interrogate and historically situate this construct.
Then, we will study texts with different methodological approaches, ranging from political, social, and economic history to cultural anthropology to memoirs, essays, and poetry of historical significance. We will pay attention to people at the margins, to those who are oppressed and persecuted within their homes, or in the places they have been displaced to as refugees and migrants.
Throughout the course, we will watch films and documentaries related to our themes. In that sense, this course this takes a broad view of history. While our primary focus will be on academic scholarship, we will also look at how people beyond the university construct their stories, and how they critique the “official” histories written by dominant groups.
Dissension is found among academics—as historical events and processes are continually interpreted and reinterpreted—but there is also a difference in how academics and non-academics recount history. We will, therefore, study the constructions of history from within the university and beyond.
The course readings are organized under the following 5 themes:
1. Making and Unmaking Borders and Citizens: Nationalisms, Constitutions, and Wars
2. Unrealized Revolutions: Caste & Class
3. WARSCAPES
4. Being Different: Home and Diaspora
5. The Contours of Hindu Nationalism