DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF DELHI

DELHI-110007

Allotment of Courses for the Current Batch of M.Phil Students (August-December 2019)

1. Contextualizing Disability Studies in Literature and Films: Paradigms and Practices - Anil K. Aneja

2. “Edible Écriture”: An Exploration of the Representations of Food in Literature, Media - Swetha Antony and Popular Culture

3. Out-Cast (E)Ing Caste : The Writings of B.R. Ambedkar - Tapan Basu

4. The Lyric Impulse, and Beyond - Prasanta Chakravarty

5. Caste and Literary Imagination: A Reading of Dalit Fiction - Raj Kumar

6. Shakespeare Across Media - Shormishtha Panja

7. Globalization, Cosmopolitanism and the Postcolonial Novel - Ira Raja 8. The "idea" of Asia: Sites, Imaginations, Networks - Anjana Sharma

1. Contextualizing Disability Studies in Literature and Films: Paradigms and Practices

(MAIN CAMPUS) Anil K. Aneja

Though the academic engagement with disability is rather recent, the roots of neglect and discrimination against persons with disabilities can be historically traced. While many consider disability to be only physical or mental in a clinical manner, it impacts individuals and groups in multiple ways. According to World Health Organization's (WHO) recent figures, the number of persons with disabilities globally ranges around 15% out of which nearly 4% persons suffer from severe disabilities. Despite this alarming number, the concerns and voices of such persons often remain unheard.

As Shelley Tremain in her introduction to "Foucault and the Government of Disability" observes, “Academics who conduct their work under the rubric of disability studies have begun to problematize the foundational assumptions of many disciplines and fields of inquiry, as well as the methodologies that they employ, the criteria of evaluation to which they appeal, and the epistemological and social positioning of the researchers and theorists invested in them."

It is interesting to note that though sporadic, there has been a continuous engagement of writers as far as representation of disability in literature is concerned. By studying illustrative works, both Western and Indian portraying disability, with close reference to the prevailing socio-cultural attitudes and disability studies' paradigms, this course hopes to break fresh grounds in establishing relationships and developing research areas involving literature, cinema and disability. Classical figures of Dhritrashtra, Tiresias and Oedipus are celebrated till date. In the 18th century, it is Jonathan Swift who first appears to question the notion of the 'normal' body. The subsequent centuries have seen an increasing interest in disability on the part of the writers with significant shifts in focus being witnessed after the Second World War.Along with the works of established writers, we now also hear the voices of those who have closely encountered disability. Further, the socialparadigm of disability begins to replace the earlier medical and institutionalapproaches. The trends so developed in the latter half of the 20th Century have been strengthened by the rights-based disability movements which inform our present day concerns.

The first three weeks of the course will focus on understanding historical outlooks, disability theories and issues. In the subsequent eight weeks, the representative Western and Indian works will be analyzed. The last two weeks of the course will focus on the use of the mainstream cinema in foregrounding disability experiences.

Apart from engaging students with a relatively fresh research domain, the course gains relevance in its attempts to understand issues and concerns of a significant category of persons who are fast being included in the mainstream higher education system in terms of numbers, as resources and also as voices in the academic curriculum.

Phone: 27666757

Fax : 27666343

Detailed Course

Weeks I-III:- Disability Theories & Concepts

Week I: Understanding Disability

a) Colin Barnes, Geof Mercer and Tom Shakespeare,Exploring Disability: A Sociological Introduction. Cambridge, Malden, MA: Polity Press.1999. Print.

b) Colin Barnes, ‘A Legacy of Oppression: A History of Disability in Western Culture’, in Len Barton and Mike Oliver (eds), Disability Studies: Past, Present and Future, pp. 3–24. Leeds: The Disability Press, 1997. Print.

Week II- International and National Dimensions

a) "Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Optional Protocol." Www.un.org. United Nations, 13 Dec. 2006. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.

< http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/convention/convoptprot-e.pdf>

b) Addlakha, Renu. Disability Studies in India: Global Discourses, Local Realities. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Week III- Disability Movements and Literature

Shelley Tremain,Foucault and the Government of Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2005. Print.

Week IV : War and Disability

a) D. H. Lawrence,Lady Chatterley's Lover. London: Heinemann, 1972. Print.

b) Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. Print.

Week V-VI Some Significant Shifts

Week V:

a) Pearl S. Buck, The Child Who Never Grew. New York: J. Day, 1950. Print.

b)KenKesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: A Novel. New York: Viking, 1962. Print.

Week VI:

Elizabeth Kata, A Patch of Blue. New York: Popular Library, 1961. Print.

Week VII-VIII: Expressions in the 21st Century

Week VII:

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Print.

Week VIII:

Anthony Doerr,All the Light We Cannot See. Scribner. 2014. Print.

Week IX- XIII- The Indian Context

Week IX-X-FICTION

Week IX:

Premchand.,Rangbhoomi. trans. Manju Jain. Delhi: Saraswati Press, 1986. Print.

Week X:

JoginderPaul, Blind. trans. Sukrita Paul Kumar, and HinaNandrajog. Harper Perennial, 2016. Print.

Week XI: DRAMA

a)GirishKarnad, 'Broken Images' in Collected Plays. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.

b) Mahesh Dattani,Bravely Fought the Queen. London: Border Crossings, 2003. Print.

Week XII-XIII: FILMS

Week XII:

a) Sparsh. Dir. SaiParanjpye. 1980. Film.

b) Aankhein. Dir. VipulAmrutlal Shah. 2002. Film.

Week XIII:

a) Black. Dir. Sanjay LeelaBhansali. 2005. Film.

b) Margarita, with the Straw. Dir. Shonali Bose. 2014. Film

2. “Edible Écriture”: An Exploration of the Representations of Food in Literature, Media and Popular Culture

(MAIN CAMPUS) Swetha Antony

Food, even when relegated to the realm of the everyday, manifests its presence and pressures in complicated ways. Given this reality, can food or even the language and literature surrounding food be taken for granted? What are the implications involved in making sense of food today?Within this broader context this course intends to study the relationship between culinary practices and negotiations of identity(ies) by examining the acts of cooking, eating, the processes in between and beyond. Apart from critically engaging with the representation of these processes in literature, media and popular culture the course aims to see how they have functioned as tropes for determining socio-political and cultural identity through the tryst with material history. Among the myriad questions evoked by the discourse the course will focus on the following:

• Why is food central to language, literature and cultural modes of existence? How does one account for its representation? Is it merely the given or does it become a symbol or metaphor evoking epiphanies?

• How does representation of food impact our existence and what are its links to identity – personal, collective, religious, regional and national? Can consumption of food as represented in various ways be read as consumption of culture?

• Can language capture the nuances associated with food such as taste, flavour and fragrance and its inevitable link to memories? Is it possible to imagine food which one has not tasted, Ambrosia, for instance? Do we relish the imagined food or that which we eat? How do we understand the ways in which this sensory experience is translated into a play with space and time?

The course does come with a caveat. The texts chosen for discussion pertains to the representation of the culinary practices associated with the Indian subcontinent, though in the course of the discussions allusions will be made to other relevant texts beyond the outlined scope. The course will start off with the metaphorics of gastronomic practices and the structuralist paradigm of food. Then the focus will be on four aspects pertinent to the contemporary discourse on food. The notion of“culinary citizenship” as foregrounded by Anita Mannur in her essay “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.” to refer to a form of affective citizenship which grants subjects the ability to claim and inhabit certain subject positions via their relationship to food. The concept of Culinary Nationalism as envisaged by Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson. The centrality of class, caste and sexuality to the discoursewill be delineated next. Lastly, the course will engage with the culinary spaces in the popular imagination. The concept of “edible chronotopes”envisionedby Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblettto detail how food entails within it a complex set of sensory and social experiences indicating a space – time convergence will be the theoretical linchpin. In the contemporary scene where mobility has to be accounted for, this concept becomes a point of departure to understand the evolving culinary routes, be it the domestic/ private culinary spaces or the itinerant public culinary spaces

Week 1: Overview of the course and introduction to the readings

(A list of the readings and an extended bibliography will be provided before the commencement of the course)

Week 2:Selections from Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (ed.)Food and Culture: A Reader. New York: Routledge.2013

Levi Strauss, Claude. “The Culinary Triangle”. pp.28–35.

Barthes, Roland. 1997. “Toward A Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption”. pp. 20–27. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Brillat-Savarin, J. 1994. “On Gastronomy”; Chapter 12: “On Gourmands”. J. Brillat- Savarin The Physiology of Taste, pp. 141–154. New York: Penguin. Douglas, Mary. 1997. “Deciphering A Meal”. M. Douglas Food and Culture: A Reader, pp. 36–54. New York: Routledge.

Weeks 3& 4:

Mannur, Anita, “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.” MELUS 32.4 (2007): 11-31.

---.“Feeding Desire: Food, Domesticity, and Challenges to Hetero-Patriarchy.”Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 10.1 (2003): 34-51.

---. “Food Matters: An Introduction.” The Massachusetts Review 45.3 (2004): 209-216.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Indian Takeout: How a family of pirates from Rhode Island brought home all the flavors of Calcutta in a single suitcase.”<https://www.foodandwine.com/articles/indian-takeout>online April 01, 2000, accessed February 19, 2019

---. “Mrs. Sen’s.” from The Interpreter of Maladies. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999. 111-135.

Selections from the poetry of ImtiazDharker

Week 5:Alibhai- Brown,Yasmin. The Settler's Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food.London: Portobello Books,2008

Week 6: Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. “Culinary Nationalism”. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 10.1(Winter 2010):102-109.

Appadurai, Arjun. “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India”. Comparative Studies in

Society and History 30.1 (Jan 1988) 3-24.

Selections from Achaya. K.T. Indian Food: A Historical Companion. New Delhi: OUP,1994

Nandy,Ashis. “Ethnic Cuisine: the significant `other'”.India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3/4, India: A National Culture?(WINTER 2002-SPRING 2003), pp. 246-251

--. “The Changing Popular Culture of Indian Food: Preliminary Notes” South Asia

Researchwww.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0262728004042760. VOL 24 NO1 MAY 2004 Vol. 24(1): 9–19; 042760

Week 7: Nair, Anita. Alphabet Soup for Lovers. Harper Collins, 2018.

Selections from Achaya, K.T.A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food. New Delhi: OUP,1998.

Weeks 8&9:

Rege, Sharmila, DeepaTak, et. al., eds. Isn’t This Plate Indian? Dalit Histories and Memories of Food. Pune: KrantijyotiSavitribaiPhule Women’s Study Centre,2009.

Rege, Sharmila. Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women’s Testimonies. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006.

Caste on the Menu Card(2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQYRinzRGXU DeepaTak and Tina Aranha. Cast(e)ing Food: Interrogating Popular Media https://www.sahapedia.org/casteing-food-interrogating-popular-media Guru, Gopal. “Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies”. University of Pennsylvania: Center for the Advanced Study of India, 2009. <http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/index.htm>. Web. Selections from Achaya.K.T.Indian Food: A Historical Companion. New Delhi: OUP,1994 Selections from Achaya, K.T. A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food. New Delhi: OUP,1998.

Selections from Shekhar, HansdaSowvendra. The Adivasi Will Not Dance. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2017

Week10:Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. Foreword in Long, Lucy M, ed. Culinary tourism: Material Worlds. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

The Lunchbox. Dir. RiteshBatra, 2013

Week 11:Rao, Ranjini and RuchiraRamanujam.Around the World with the Tadka Girls.Westland Ltd: 2013

Week 12: Chef. Dir. Raja Krishna Menon, 2017

Week 13: Conclusion and further explorations

3. Out-Cast (E)Ing Caste : The Writings of B.R. Ambedkar (MAIN CAMPUS) Tapan Basu The course will focus on a study of the writings of B.R. Ambedkar spanning a period of forty years. The study will necessarily be conducted through the reading of only a selection of Ambedkar’s writings, in this case his writings on caste. It is well-known that Ambedkar accorded a lot of importance to what he wrote . He carefully planned the outlines of his texts. He invested much authority in them, and conversely, tried his best to challenge the authority of texts which he disagreed with, such as Manusmriti or the statements of Gandhi. Either way, to use the words of Valerian Roderigues, he “privileged the written word.” He would, to continue with Roderigues’ observations on the subject, .... make written submissions before committees and commissions to negotiate across the authority of a formulated text. In a culture that was largely oral, the written work gave him a distinctiveness which earlier the upper castes in general and Brahmins in particular had tended to usurp. The written word enabled him to reach out to a larger world, conferring some degree of permanence or immortality and allowing him to usurp some of the Brahminical authority. Ambedkar’s writings, therefore, were intrinsic to his political project and signaled, at each stage of his variegated career as a public intellectual, his resolve to obtain for his people, the Dalits, their due recognition as persons on India’s socio-philosophical terrain. Week I Introduction Week II Autobiographical Notes; In Pursuit of Ambedkar by Bhagwan Das Week III “Castes in India : Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development” (1916) Week IV Speech delivered on the occasion of the Mahad Satyagraha (1927) Statement to the Simon Commission on behalf of Bahiskrita Hitakarini Sabha (1928) Week V Memorandum to the Round Table Conference (1930) Supplementary Memorandum to the Round Table Conference (1931) The Untouchables and Pax Britannica (1931) Week VI Annihilation of Caste (1936), Gandhi’s critique of Annihilation of Caste and Ambedkar’s response to Gandhi’s critique of Annihilation of Caste (1936) Week VII “Away from the Hindus” (1936) “What Path to Salvation?” (1936) Week VIII What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables. (1943) Mr. Gandhi and the Emancipation of the Untouchables (1945) Week 1X Who were the Shudras? How they came to be the Fourth Varna in Hindu Society (1946) The Untouchables : Who were they and why they became Untouchables (1948) Week X Untouchables, or the Children of India’s Ghetto (1953) Week XI The Buddha and his Dhamma (1956) Week XII The Legacy of Ambedkar: Screening and Discussion of Anand Patwardhan’s film

Jai Bhim Comrade Week XIII Conclusion

4. The Lyric Impulse, and Beyond

(MAIN CAMPUS) Prasanta Chakravarty Lyric is a way to describe a poem when it is at its most poetic, at its realized minimal. There are certain normative claims and features of the modern lyric. For instance, hailing the lyric as the oldest form of literary expression. Or claims of personal utterance (the subjective wholeness of the lyric ‘I’ and its dissolution) leading to the verge of being almost a confessional genre. The lyric’s immediacy and its expressive economy within modern claims, define it in opposition to the narrative, even as its strange mystical obscurity leavens a prescriptive sine qua non.

But in the Western world the lyric’s timelessness is but a recent discovery. The assumption does not foreclose certain critical questions. When does lyric turn into a literary production to be read and realized, not sung, for instance? When and how does this new approach replace how poems used to be read and performed in antiquity? In other words how did the lyric become a genre? Is the lyrical impulse a desiderata of romanticism, or does it indeed create a mind in solitary expression to be overheard, as claimed by commentators ranging from G.W.F. Hegel and John Stuart Mill through Reuben Brower, Cecil Day Lewis and Helen Vendler?

The first half of the course will trace a critical genealogy of the lyric form. On one hand, the lyric is an internal mimesis of sound and imagery, a mode of enunciation and on the other hand, as Rene Wellek had claimed, it seems much more profitable to study it as a variety of lyric utterances and their histories, in order to grasp it within concrete conventions and traditions. There are indeed various ‘models of lyrics’ which have developed contingently. Lyric theory is therefore retrospective (looking back on the classical markers) and prospective (looking ahead to contemporary and prophesying future lyric assumptions). In the early modern world, for instance, the lyric can be glimpsed in various reflexive generic classifications including epithalamium, complaint, elegy, hymn, love song, sonnet, and pastoral.

Modern critical approaches to the lyric essentially start with the idea of slow reading of oneself and one’s interlocutors. There is no escaping John Stuart Mill’s eloquent definition that the lyric “…has always seemed to us like the lament of a prisoner in a solitary cell, ourselves listening, unseen in the next.” After many twists and turns we shall encounter Jacques Derrida's reformulation of Schelgel in his comparison of lyric to a hedgehog, "the animal thrown into the road, absolute, solitary, rolled up in a ball, next to itself." This recurrent turn towards the absolute poem, complete as the abject hedgehog is only countered by the more historicist appeals, as issues of the gendered lyric persona, the avant-garde anti-lyric and more culturally comparative frameworks of lyric beset us. We shall also deal with elements of composition, musicality, tonality and patterns of rhyming.

Throughout the course, we shall read the lyric from all literary ages as a thing in itself primarily as an ongoing process of realization, and in order to hone our interpretive skills of reading poetry slowly.

Week I (The Problematique)

James William Johnson, "Lyric." in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.

Mutlu Konuk Blasing, sections from Lyric Poetry: The Pain and Pleasure of Words.

Susan Stewart, sections from Poetry and the Fate of the Senses.

Week II (Archetexts)

G.W. F. Hegel, from Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. James Stuart Mill,Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties.

Edgar Allan Poe, Philosophy of Composition.

Charles Bernstein, from A Poetics.

Poem: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, The Wanderer’s Last Song.

Week III (Lyric Becomes a Genre)

Northrop Frye, Theory of Genres.

Rene Wellek, Genre Theory, the Lyric and Erlebnis.

Jonathan Culler, Lyric, History and Genre.

Read: Thomas Wyatt, I Abide and Abide. from Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English PoetryThe Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel. William Blake, The Sick Rose.

Week IV (Departures in History)

W.R. Johnson, On the Absence of Ancient Lyric Theory.

Seth Lehrer, The Genre of the Grave and the Origins of the Middle English Lyric.

Heather Dubrow, Lyric Forms.

Poems: The Owl and the Nightingale, John Donne, "A Hymne to Christ, at the Authors Last Going into Germany," "Hymne to God my God, in my Sicknesse."

Week V (The Drama of Lyrics)

M.H. Abrams, The Lyric as a Poetic Norm.

Herbert F. Tucker, Dramatic Monologue and the Overhearing of the Lyric.

Poems: Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi. Robert Frost, The Pauper Witch of Grafton.

Week VI (New Criticism)

Reuben Brower, The Speaking Voice.

T.S. Eliot, The Three Voices of Poetry.

Poems: H.W. Longfellow, A Psalm of Life. Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord.

Week VII (Structuralist Reading)

Roman Jakobson, Closing Statement, Linguistics and Poetics.

Michael Riffatarre, The Poem’s Significance.

Hans Robert Jauss, from Aesthetic Experience and Social Norms.

Poem: Theophile Gautier, The Dessert.

Week VIII (Post-Structuralism) Harold Bloom, The Breaking of Form.

Jacques Derrida, Che Cos’e la Poesia?

Barbara Johnson, Anthropomorphism in Lyric and Law.

John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Charles Baudelaire, Obsession/Correspondances.

Week IX (The Frankfurt School)

Walter Benjamin, On Some Motifs in Baudelaire.

Theodore Adorno, On Lyric Poetry and Society.

Drew Milne, In Memory of the Pterodactyl: The Limits of Lyric Humanism.

Poems: Charles Baudelaire, The Death of Lovers. Edward Morike, On a Walking Tour. Stephan George, In the Wind’s Weaving, Berolt Brecht, On Suicide.

Week X ( Phenomenologies of Reading)

Martin Heidegger, Poetically, Man Dwells.

Allen Grossman, Summa Lyrica: A Primer of the Commonplaces in Speculative Poetics.

Georgio Agamben, The End of the Poem.

Rei Terada, from Looking Away: Phenomenality and Dissatisfaction, Kant to Adorno.

Poems: Friedrich Holderlin, In Lovely Blueness. Paul Celan, Todtnauberg.

Week XI (Rhyme and Musicality)

Simon Jarvis, Why Rhyme Pleases?

John Hollander, "Music and Poetry", Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.

Craig Dworkin, Lyric and the Hazard of Music.

Poems: Wallace Stevens, Notes towards a Supreme Fiction.

Week XII(Avant-Garde and Anti-Lyricism)

Marjorie Perloff, Can(n)on to the Right of Us, Can(n)on to the Left of Us: A Plea for Difference.

Christopher Nealon, The Matter of Capital, or Catastrophe and Textuality.

Poems: Alfred Tennyson, The Charge of the Light-Brigade. Jennifer Moxley, Our Defiant Motives.

Week XIII(Sexuality and Lyric)

Nancy J. Vickers, Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme.

Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert, Gender, Creativity, and the Woman Poet

Barbara Johnson, Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion.

Thomas E. Yingling, The Homosexual Lyric.

Poems: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Poems Before Congress. Gwendolyn Brooks, The Mother. Hart Crane, Episode of Hands.

5. Caste and Literary Imagination: A Reading of Dalit Fiction

(MAIN CAMPUS) Raj Kumar

Dalits are ‘the other’ in Indian society. Popularly known as untouchables in the caste Hindu society, they are the

helpless victims of caste oppression over millennia. It is true that Dalits have suffered caste humiliations all

throughout these years; but at no point of time they have completely surrendered their courageous selves to their

upper caste oppressors. Their everyday engagement with the caste-battles is reflected in their creative arts - be it

song, dance, music, painting or story-telling. Since literacy was earlier not available to them due to stringent caste

laws, they vent their repressive anger mostly through oral narratives. It is only after India’s independence that Dalits

got opportunities to get formal education. Today a number of Dalits are educated. These educated Dalits are now

using literacy as weapons to mobilize resistance against various forms of caste oppression. Their protests against

caste have come out in various literary forms collectively known as ‘Dalit literature’ today.

Poems and autobiographies are the popular genres Dalit writers have experimented over the years. Fiction writing

seems to have arrived quite late. There are not too many Dalit fictional works even to these days. And those few

which are available are mostly written in Indian languages. Of late, few of them are now available in English

translation.

The primary focus of this course is to familiarize with the world of Dalit fiction. How do we historically situate them?

What could be their language and philosophy? How are they different from the innumerable non-Dalit fiction

available in Indian languages? What are the major issues Dalit writers write in their fiction? What are the

pedagogical approaches to study those issues? These and several other related questions will be dealt with

throughout the course. Finally, an attempt will be made to address the question of Dalit aesthetics in Dalit fiction.

Primary Texts:

Week One: Introduction

Week Two: Joseph Macwan’s The Stepchild

Week Three: P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change

Week Four: Bama’s Vendetta

Week Five: Sharankumar Limbale’s Hindu: a Novel

Week Six: Omprakash Valmiki’s Amma and Other Stories

Week Seven: G. Kalyan Rao’s Untouchable Spring

Week Eight: Sankar Prasad Singha and Indranil Acharya’s Survival and Other Stories: Bangla Dalit Fiction in

Translation (Edited)

Week Nine: Gogu Shyamala’s Father may be an Elephant and Mother only a Small Basket, but …

Week Ten: Urmila Pawar’s Motherwit

Week Eleven: Ajay Navaria’s Unclaimed Terrain

Week Twelve: Meena Kandasamy’s The Gypsy Goddess

Week Thirteen: Akhila Naik’s Bheda

Week Fourteen: Concluding Discussion

Secondary Sources:

Abraham, Joshil K. and Misrahi-Barak. Dalit Literatures in India. New Delhi: Routledge, 2016.

Ambedkar, B. R. The Untouchables: Who are they? And why they became Untouchables? New Delhi: Amrit Book, 1948.

Aloysius, G. Nationalism without a Nation in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar. Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal. 1872-1947.

Curzon, London, 1997.

Basu, Swaraj. Readings on Dalit Identity: History, Literature and Religion. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2016.

Forrester, Dunkan B. Caste and Christianity. London: Clarion Press, 1980.

Gajarawala, Toral Jatin. Untouchable Fictions: Literary Realism and the Crisis of Caste. New York: Fordham

University Press, 2013.

Galanter, Marc. Competing Equalities. London: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Ganguly, Debjani. Caste and Dalit Lifeworlds: Postcolonial Perspectives. New Delhi; Orient Longman, 2005.

Guru, Gopal. Humiliation: Claims and Context. (Ed.) New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Mani, Braj Ranjan. Debrahmanising History: Dominance and Resistance in Indian Society. Delhi: Manohar, 2005.

Mukherjee, Meenakshi. Early Novels in India. (Ed.) New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2002.

Omvedt, Gail. Understanding Caste: From Buddha to Ambedkar and Beyond. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2011.

Rao, Anupama. Gender and Caste (Ed.) New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2003.

Rawat, Ramnarayan S. and Satyanarayana, K. Dalit Studies. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2016.

Viswanathan, Gauri. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

6. Shakespeare Across Media

(SOUTH CAMPUS) Shormishtha Panja

“The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.” W.H. Auden

This course will examine not just the plays and poems of Shakespeare but how the man and his works have been appropriated in different cultures and deployed through multiple media. Shakespeare’s birthday is celebrated in Germany, there is a Globe Theatre in Tokyo, the reconstruction of the Globe The atre on the banks of the Thames was spearheaded by an American actor, there is a Shakespeare library on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, he is the only compulsory author in the National Curriculum and in Advanced Level English Literature in UK schools, he has been on the Indian curriculum longer than he has been on the British curriculum and he has a massively subsidized theatre company named after him in the UK. According to critic Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare is “already not only modern but postmodern: a simulacrum, a replicant, a montage, a bricolage. A collection of found objects, repurposed as art.” In the process of examining stage productions, films, television, Shakespeare in art, illustration and popular culture, Shakespeare for children and Shakespeare in Indian translation, this course will probe the whole process of cultural appropriation and the means by which a cultural artefact of global dimensions is fashioned. Debates about high culture and low culture, the varying demands of different media, the refashioning of the Shakespeare text in new cultural forms, in the context of a particular culture or contemporary tastes, and the economics of the Shakespeare industry will inevitably form part of this enquiry.

Below are the topics that will be covered in the course:

I. Introduction

II. Shakespeare Performance

Bate, Jonathan with Russell Jackson. Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History. Oxford, 1995 (selections)

Bulman, James C.,ed. Shakespeare: Theory and Performance. St. Martin’s, 1995(selections)

Coursen, H.R. Contemporary Shakespeare Production. Peter Lang, 2010 (selections)

Hodgdon, Barbara and W.B. Worthen, eds. A Companion to Shakespeare Performance. Blackwell 2005 (selections)

Wells, Stanley, ed. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge, 2002 (selections)

III. The Royal Shakespeare Company

Addenbrook, David. The Royal Shakespeare Company: the Peter Hall Years. William Kimber, 1974 (selections)

Billington, Michael. The State of the Nation: British Theatre since 1945. Faber, 2007 (selections)

Chambers, Colin. Inside the Royal Shakespeare Company: Creativity and Institution. Routledge, 2004

Nicoll, Allardyce and Kenneth Muir, eds. Shakespeare Survey 19, Cambridge 2006

Trowbridge, Simon and Sally Beauman. The Company: a Biographical Dictionary of the Royal Shakespeare

Company. Oxford, 2010

IV. Shakespeare on the Indian Stage

Parsi theatre

NSD

V.Shakespeare on the Indian Stage (contd.)

Utpal Dutt

Habib Tanvir

Lokendra Arambam

Roysten Abel

Atul Kumar

VI. Shakespeare on Film

Olivier, Welles, Kozintsev, Kurosawa

Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare and F ilm: A Norton Guide. Norton, 2008

Jackson, Russell, ed. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. Cambridge, 2007 (selections)

Skovmand, Michael, ed. Screen Shakespeare. Aarhus, 1994 (selections)

VII. Shakespeare on Film (contd.)

Branagh, Luhrman, Almeyreda, Bhardwaj

Cartelli, Thomas and Katherine Rowe. New Wave Shakespeare on Screen. Polity 2007 (selections)

Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare at the Cineplex: the Kenneth Branagh Era. Ohio, 2003

Rothwell, Kenneth S. A History of Shakespeare on Screen. Cambridge, 2004 (selections)

VIII. Shakespeare on Television

BBC productions of Shakespeare

Shakespeare on American Television

Burt, Richard ed. Shakespeares after Shakepeare. Greenwood, 2007

Burt, Richard ed. Shakespeare after Mass Media. Palgrave, 2002

Davies, Anthony and Stanley Wells, eds. Shakespeare and the Moving Image. Cambridge, 1994 (selections)

Holderness, Graham. Visual Shakespeare: Essays in Film and Television. 2002 (selections)

IX. Shakespeare and Painting

Burnett, Mark Thornton, A.S. Creek and R. Way, eds. Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts.

Edinburgh, 2011 (selections)

Sillars, Stuart. Painting Shakespeare: The Artist as Critic 1720-1820. Cambridge, 2006

X. Shakespeare and Illustration

Sillars, Stuart. The Illustrated Shakespeare 1709-1875. Cambridge, 2008

Whitfield, Peter. Illustrating Shakespeare. British Library, 2013 (selections)

XI. Shakespeare in Popular Culture

Manga Shakespeare, Punk Shakespeare, Digital Shakespeare, YouTube Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Popular Music, Shakespeare in Popular TV shows eg. Moonlighting, Dr. Whoetc.

Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare and Modern Culture. Pantheon, 2008

Lanier, Douglas. Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture. Oxford, 2002

Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow/Lowbrow. Cambridge, 1988 (selections)

Shaughnessy, Robert, ed. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Cambridge, 2007 (selections)

XII. Shakespeare for Children

Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb. Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. Project Gutenberg

Translations of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare in Bengali and Oriya

XIII. Shakespeare in Indian Translation

Rakshit, Haran Chandra trans. Shakespeare (in Bengali)

Dutt, Utpal. Choitali Raater Shopno. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Bengali)

Dutta, Bimal Chandra. Shakespeare (in Bengali)

Bachchan, Harivansh Rai. Macbeth (in Hindi)

Sahay, Raghuvir. Bagro Basant Hai. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Hindi)

Any other Indian language known to students

Week II

Auslander, Philip.Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture.New York: Routledge, 2008.*

Bate, Jonathan with Russell Jackson. Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History. Oxford, 1995.

Bulman, James C.,ed. Shakespeare: Theory and Performance. St. Martin’s, 1995.

Coursen, H.R. Contemporary Shakespeare Production.Peter Lang, 2010.

Hodgdon, Barbara and W.B. Worthen, eds. A Companion to Shakespeare Performance.Blackwell 2005.

Holland, Peter. Shakespeare, Memory and Performance. Cambridge UP, 2006.*

Wells, Stanley, ed. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage.Cambridge, 2002.

Week III

Addenbrook, David. The Royal Shakespeare Company: the Peter Hall Years. William Kimber, 1974.

Billington, Michael. The State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945. Faber, 2007.

Brockbank, Philip. Players of Shakespeare: Essays in Shakespeare Performance by 12 Players with the

RSC. Cambridge UP, 1985.*

Chambers, Colin. Inside the Royal Shakespeare Company: Creativity and Institution. Routledge, 2004.

Flannery, James W. “Portrait of a Theatre in its Community: the RSC of London.” Educational Theatre Journal 19.3 (1967): 382-391.*

Nicoll, Allardyce and Kenneth Muir, eds. Shakespeare Survey 19, Cambridge 2006.

Trowbridge, Simon and Sally Beauman. The Company: a Biographical Dictionary of the Royal Shakespeare

Company. Oxford, 2010.

Shakespeare Quarterly 62.3 (Fall 2011) “Shakespeare and Performance.”*

Week IV

Bharucha, Rustom. “Foreign Asia/Foreign Shakespeare” Theatre Journal 56.1 (2004): 1-28.

Das Gupta, HemendraNath. The Indian Stage.Calcutta: 1944-46.Rpt. Delhi: MunshiramManoharlal, 2002.*

Hansen, Kathryn. “Making Women Visible” Theatre Journal 51.2 (1999): 127-147.

Panja, Shormishtha. “Intercultural Theatre and Shakespeare Productions in Asia: India.” Routledge Handbook of

Asian Theatre ed. Siyuan Lee. Routledge, 2016.

Panja, Shormishtha and BabliMoitraSaraf, eds. Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures

and Cultures. Sage, 2016.*

Singh, Lataed. Theatre in Colonial India: Play-House of Power. Oxford UP, 2009.

Week V

Bharucha, Rustom. Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theatre of Bengal.U of Hawaii P, 1983.*

Dalmia, Vasudha. Poetics, Plays and Performances Oxford UP, 2006.*

Deshpande, Sudhavna. “Upside-down Midas: HabibTanvir at 80.”TDR 48.4 (2004): 71-80.*

Dharwadker, Aparna. “India’s Theatrical Modernity” Theatre Journal 63.3 (2011): 425-437.*

---. Theatres of Independence Univ. of Iowa Press, 2005.*

Jain, Nemi Chand. Indian Theatre: Tradition, Continuity and Change. New Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1992.*

Karanth, K. Shivaram. Yakshagana. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1997.*

Kaushal, J.N. ed. Rang Yatra: Twenty-five Years of the NSD Repertory Company.

Delhi: National School of Drama, 1992.*

Kennedy, Dennis and Yong Li Lan, eds. Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance eds. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.*

Lal, Ananda, ed. Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre.Oxford UP, 2004.

---andSukantaChaudhuri, eds. Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage.Calcutta: Papyrus, 2001.*

Loomba, Ania. “Local manufacture made-in-India Othello fellows: Issues of race, hybridity and location in post-colonial Shakespeares.” Post-colonial Shakespeareseds. AniaLoomba and Martin Orkin. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. 143-163.*

Panja, Shormishtha. “Lebedeff, Kendal, Dutt: Three Travellers on the Indian Stage.”Transnational Mobilities in

Early Modern Theatereds. Robert Henke and Eric Nicholson.Ashgate, 2014.*

---. “Intercultural Theatre and Shakespeare Productions in Asia: India.” Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre ed. Siyuan Lee. Routledge, 2016.

---. “Shakespeare in India: Resistance, Recalcitrance, Recuperation.” Transnational Drama and Performanceeds.

Robert Henke and Eric Nicholson. Ashgate, 2008.*

Panja, Shormishtha and BabliMoitraSaraf, eds. Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures

and Cultures. Sage, 2016.*

Raha, Kironmoy. Bengali Theatre. NBT, 1978.

Richmond,Farley P., Darius L. Swann and Phillip B. Zarrilli, eds. Indian Theatre: Traditions of Performance. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1990.*

Zarrilli, Phillip B. “For whom is the king a king? Issues of intercultural production, perception, and reception in a Kathakali King Lear.” Critical Theory and Performance eds. Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1992. 16-40.*

Week VI

Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare and Film: A Norton Guide. Norton, 2008.

Cook, Patrick J. Cinematic Hamlet: The Films of Olivier, Zeffirelli,Branagh, and Almereyda. Ohio UP, 2011.*

Garis, Robert. The Films of Orson Welles.Cambridge UP, 2004.*

Hatchuel, Sarah. Shakespeare from Stage to Screen.Cambridge UP, 2004.*

Hatchuel, Sarah and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, eds. Shakespeare on Screen: Hamlet. Univ. of Rouen and du Havre , 2011.*

Holland, Peter. Shakespeare and Film. Oxford UP*

Jackson, Russell, ed. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film.Cambridge, 2007.

Parker, Brian. “Nature and Society in Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood.” University of Toronto Quarterly 66.3 (1997): 508-525.*

---. “Ran and the Tragedy of History.” University of Toronto Quarterly 55.4 (1986): 412-423.*

Rothwell, Kenneth S. A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television. Cambridge UP, 2004.*

Skovmand, Michael, ed. Screen Shakespeare. Aarhus, 1994.

Thornton-Burnett, Mark. Shakespeare and World Cinema. Cambridge UP, 2012.

Week VII

Cartelli, Thomas and Katherine Rowe. New Wave Shakespeare on Screen.Polity 2007.

Cook, Patrick J. Cinematic Hamlet: The Films of Olivier, Zeffirelli,Branagh, and Almeyreda. Ohio UP, 2011.*

Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare at the Cineplex: the Kenneth Branagh Era. Ohio UP, 2003.

Hatchuel, Sarah and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, eds. Shakespeare on Screen: Hamlet. Univ. of Rouen and du Havre, 2011.*

Rothwell, Kenneth S. A History of Shakespeare on Screen.Cambridge, 2004.

Shakespeare Survey 39 (2002): “Shakespeare on Film and Television.”*

Week VIII

Burt, Richard ed. Shakespeares after Shakespeare.Greenwood, 2007.

---, ed. Shakespeare after Mass Media.Palgrave, 2002.

Davies, Anthony and Stanley Wells, eds. Shakespeare and the Moving Image. Cambridge, 1994.

Hatchuel, Sarah and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, eds. Shakespeare on Screen Television Shakespeare. Univ. of Rouen and du Havre, 2008.*

Holderness, Graham.Visual Shakespeare: Essays in Film and Television. 2002.

Rothwell, Kenneth S. A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television. Cambridge UP, 2004.*

Shakespeare Survey 39 (2002): “Shakespeare on Film and Television.”*

Week IX

Bate, Jonathan. Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination. Clarendon P, 1986.*

Burnett, Mark Thornton, A.S. Creek and R. Way, eds. Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the

Arts.Edinburgh, 2011.

Martineau, Jane, et al,ed. Shakespeare in Art.Merrell, 2003.*

Merchant, Moelwyn W.Shakespeare and the Artist. Oxford UP, 1959.*

Sillars, Stuart. Painting Shakespeare: The Artist as Critic 1720-1820. Cambridge, 2006.

Week X

Boase, T.S.R. “Illustrations of Shakespeare’s Plays in the 17th and 18th Centuries.”JWCI 10 (1947): 83-108.*

Friedman, Winifred H. Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery. Garland P, 1976.*

---. “Some commercial aspects of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery.” JWCI 36 (1973): 396-401.*

Panja, Shormishtha. “ ‘In Search of a Local Habitation’: Illustrations in 19th and 20th Century Bengali Prose Retellings of Shakespeare.” Shakespearean International Yearbook 13ed. Stuart Sillars, Ashgate, 2013.*

---.“’To Confine the Illimitable’: Visual and Verbal Narratives in Two Bengali Retellings of Shakespeare.”Performing

Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures eds. Shormishtha Panja and BabliMoitraSaraf. Sage, 2016.

Rovee, Christopher. “ ‘Everybody’s Shakespeare’: Representative Genres and John Boydell’sWinter’s

Tale.”Studies in Romanticism 41.4 (Winter 2002): 509-543.*

Sillars, Stuart. The Illustrated Shakespeare 1709-1875.Cambridge, 2008.

Whitfield, Peter. Illustrating Shakespeare. British Library, 2013.

Week XI

Bristol, Michael. Big-Time Shakespeare. Routledge, 1996.*

Burt, Richard. “ ‘Slammin’ Shakespeare.’ ” Shakespeare Quarterly 52.2 (2002): 201-225.*

College Literature 31.4 (Fall 2004) “Shakespeare and Popular Culture.”*

Garber, Marjorie.Shakespeare and Modern Culture. Pantheon, 2008.

Hodgdon, Barbara. “”YouTube Travel.” Shakespeare Bulletin 28.3 (2010): 313-330.*

Lanier, Douglas. Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture. Oxford, 2002.

Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow/Lowbrow. Cambridge, 1988.

Rumbold, Kate. “From ‘Access’ to ‘Creativity’: Shakespeare Institutions, New Media, and the Language of Cultural Value.” Shakespeare Quarterly 61.3 (Fall 2010): 313-336.*

Shakespeare Quarterly 61.3 (Fall 2010) “Shakespeare and the New Media.”*

Shakespeare Survey 64 (2011) “Shakespeare as Cultural Catalyst.”*

Shaughnessy, Robert, ed. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture.Cambridge, 2007.

Thompson, Ayanna. “Unmooring the Moor: Researching and Teaching on You Tube.” Shakespeare Quarterly

61.3 (Fall 2010): 337-356.*

Week XII

Bottoms, Janet. “ ‘To read aright’: Representations of Shakespeare for Children.” Children’s Literature 32 92004): 1-14.*

Gearhart, Stephannie S. “ ‘Faint and Imperfect Stamps’: The Problem with Adaptations of Shakespeare for Children.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics. 27 (2007): 44-67.*

Marsden, Jean I. “Shakespeare for Girls: Mary Lamb and Tales from Shakespeare.” Children’s Literature 17 (1989): 47-63.*

Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb. Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. Project Gutenberg.www.gutenberg.org

Richmond, Velma Bourgeois. Shakespeare as Children’s Literature.McFarland, 2008.*

Rokison, Abigali. Shakespeare for Young People: Productions, Versions and Adaptations. Arden Shakespeare, 2013.*

Week XIII

Bachchan, HarivanshRai. Macbeth.(Hindi).

Dutt, Utpal. ChoitaliRaaterShopno. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream Bengali).

Dutta, Bimal Chandra. Shakespeare. (Bengali).

Indian Literature7.1 (1964).Shakespeare Number.*

Mason, David V. “Who is the Indian Shakespeare?” New Literary History 34.4 (2003): 639-658.*

Rakshit, Haran Chandra trans. Shakespeare. (Bengali).

Sahay, Raghuvir. BagroBasantHai.(A Midsummer Night’s Dream) (Hindi).

*Additional Titles

7. Globalization, Cosmopolitanism and the Postcolonial Novel

(MAIN CAMPUS) Ira Raja

What does the term globalisation mean? When did it begin and what does it entail? Is it mainly an economic or a cultural phenomenon? Doesit bring about homogenization or differentiation and fragmentation? What is its relationship to postcolonial theory? What kind of impact does it have on the sovereignty of the nation state? Does it work in conjunction with cosmopolitanism or does it undermine a truly cosmopolitan agenda?

Drawing on a selection of readings from various disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, politics, history, sociology and literature, this course seeks to,firstly, introduce students of literature to some of the major debates in globalization theory, as sampled above.The second aim of this course is to evaluate the usefulness of literature as a means of highlighting the contradictions of globalization that may be glossed over in the theory itself. Through close readings ofcontemporary novels from around the world, the course will give students an opportunity to explore the possibilities for implementing theoreticalperspectives as critical practice. Taken together, the five novels included in the weekly readings will address a number of themes and issues, including money and markets, foreign aid, development, environment, technology, migration, labour, cosmopolitanism, and the fate of the nation-state.

Week 1: Introduction

Week 2: When was Globalization?

Appadurai, Arjun, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’,Public Culture, 2.2 (1990): 1-24.

Behdad, Ali, ‘On Globalization, Again’, Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, ed. Ania Loomba et al., Duke: Durham, 2005, pp. 62-79.

Week 3: ZakesMda, The Heart of Redness(2000)

Week 4:Cultural and Economic Perspectives [TBC] Clifford, James, ‘Travelling Cultures’, Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg et al., Routledge, 1992, pp. 96-112.

Menon, Nivedita, ‘Between the Burqua and the Beauty Parlour? Globalization, Cultural Nationalism and Feminist Politics’, Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, ed. Ania Loomba et al., Duke: Durham, 2005, pp. 206-232.

Week 5: AravindaAdiga,The White Tiger (2008)

Week6:Globalization and Postcolonial Theory Krishnaswami, Revathi, ‘The Criticism of Culture and the Culture of Criticism: At the intersection of Postcolonialism and Globalization Theory’, Diacritics 32.2 (2002): 106-26. Dirlik, Arif, ‘Rethinking Colonialism: Globalization, Postcolonialism, and the Nation’, Interventions 4.3 (2002): 428-448. Week 7: ChimamandaNgoziAdichie,Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)

Week 8: Globalization and the Nation-State Mbembe, Achille, ‘At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality and Sovereignty in Africa’, Globalization ed. ArjunAppadurai, Duke: Durham, 2001. pp. 22-51.

Aretxaga, Begona, ‘Maddenning States’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 32 (2003): 393-410.

Week 9: Mohsin Hamid,Exit West (2017)

Week 10: Cosmopolitanism and Globalization Appiah, Kwame Anthony, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Penguin, 2006. [Excerpts] Brennan, Timothy, ‘Cosmo-Theory’, South Atlantic Quarterly 100/3 (2001): 659-91. Week 11: Globalization of Care

Salazar Parrenas, Rhacel, ‘International Division of Reproductive Labour’, in Servants of Globalization: Women,

Migration, and Domestic Work, Stanford UP, 2001. [Book excerpt] Week 12:AmulyaMalladi/ A House of Happy Mothers (2016)

Week 13: Concluding Discussion

8. The "idea" of Asia: Sites, Imaginations, Networks

(MAIN CAMPUS) Anjana Sharma

Connected histories, shared cultures, travelling texts and inter civilizational dialogue mark the millennia old interactions between the peoples of Asia. Then came the historical gap: from the eighteenth century onwards through much of the early twentieth century, the Western imperial juggernaut erased these pathways, halted these conversations, and re cast Asia in terms of its own cultural and political referentiality. This project was validated by writers, translators, archaeologists, travellers, scientists, historians, scholars of religions, to name a few. Ideas of Asia took shape and were transmitted from imperial sites and were circulated transnationally. What emerged in the nineteenth century European imaginary was an Asia that was defined by geography yet transcended borders, an Asia that was fundamentally displaced from its core principles of cultural syncretism. Instead, post Empire, the idea of Asia wasdefined only in terms of its individuated encounters with colonialism. With the dismantling of the imperial machinery in the twentieth century and the resurgence of robust nationalisms across the Asian continent, Asian nations looked inwards and defined themselves only in terms of their immediate colonial pasts. However, with the works of KakuzoOkakura in Japan and Tagore in India in the early 1900s began a movement of a slow revival of ancient Asian linkages. It was a movement with an interrupted history as thinkers, writers, ideologues, historians in multiple Asian and non Asian locations struggled to define themselves in terms of both the imperial encounter and the memory of older forms of non Western dominations. This course will map the cultural cartography of these encounters and seek to interrogate the ideas of Asia by exploring both the Asia of the British imperial imaginary and the multiple Asias of the pre colonial and post colonialconstruction. It will explorehow the cultural and political shifts initiated by recent historical scholarship under the rubric of Monsoon Asia and Indian Ocean Studies has lead to literary re imaginings of an Asia that looks beyond the historical rupture of the Empire. Texts for Discussion 1. William Jones and the Asiatic Society. Selections from Asiatic Researches, 1788-1794 2.. Lord Byron, "The Giaour" (1813) and Southey’s Curse of Kehama(1810) 4. Selections from Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (1988) and SaloniMathur, India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display (2007) 5. KakuzoOkakura, Ideals of the East (1903) 6.Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism (1917) 7.George Orwell, Burmese Days (1934) 8. Sugata Bose,A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (2009) 9. Tan TwanEng, The Gift of Rain (2012) 10. Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (2009) 11. Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke ( 2011) 12. Amitav Ghosh, Flood of Fire (2015)

13 Week Schedule

Week 1: Introduction—The Imperial Encounter: Trade routes, Travelogues, Linguistic encounters, “Oriental” traditions and texts. European cartography, the Hellenic definition and construction of the monolith “Asia” and the long history of cultural and civilizational appropriation. Discussions of Said’s Orientalism.

Week 2: William Jones and Warren Hastings: The “Asia Project” and Siting the Imperial imaginary. Translations, research on ancient Sanskrit texts, epigraphy, archaeological explorations and documentation. Immersion,

reflection, reformulation and dissemination.Discussions of Jones’ Presidential Addresses etc. from the Asiatic

Researches.

Week 3: The Empire Writes: British Romantic Poetics and the Imperial Encounter. The “Orient” in the British Republic of Letters.Validations, representations and imaginations.Discussion on Robert Southey’s populist poem, “The Curse of Kehama.”

Week 4: The Clash of Civilizations: Religion, Politics and Aesthetics. Desire, gender, heroism, inter textuality and the “Eastern” tale.Discussion on textual strategy,Imperial anxiety, and inter cultural encounters in latter day British Romanticism. Discussions on Byron’s “The Giaour.”

Week 5:The Imperial Gaze and India: Exhibitions, Representations, Religiosity. Orientalist discourse and the making of the “Christian” Buddha in Victorian England. The British Museum Project, Archive and the British public sphere. Textual site(s)andcultural display. Discussions on the selections by Almond on Buddhism and Mathur onIndian/Asian visual and material culture in Victorian England.

Week 6: The Rediscovery of the East: Pan Asian consciousness, Japanese imperialism, resurgent Asia. Connected histories, shared heritage and ancient civilizational linkages. Rising nationalismand the re defining of Asia through a new “Eastern” aesthetics. Discussions on Okakura’sIdeals of the East.

Week 7: The Spirit of the Age: Asian “universalism,” Asian aesthetics, Asian Renaissance. The anti colonial project,the transnational and Asian philosophical and literary networks.Okakura and Japanese aesthetics,Tagore’s travels across Asia, interrogating narrow nationalisms. Discussions on Tagore’s Nationalism.

Week 8: The White Man and His Burden: Race relations, British imperial policy, Resistance. Burma the British literary imagination, imperial law and justice, and theanti-imperial British colonial discourse.Contexts and critiques.Discussions on Orwell’s Burmese Days.

Week 9: “Asia Redux”:Circulating histories, Multiple cosmopolitism and the Trans-regional. Recovering the pre modern , pre-imperial Asia in the Indian Ocean. Travel, trade and the circulation of goods, ideas and peoples.Connection, contestations and competing regionalisms.Discussions on Monsoon Asia and Indian Ocean history in Bose’sA Hundred Horizons.

Week 10: The Enemy Within: Japanese militarism, Japanese imperialism and revisionist Asian history. Writing inner-war, occupation, trauma and memory. The Japanese Occupation of Malaysia, the end of the British Empire, the historical rupture and its buried histories. Discussions on Eng’s The Gift of Rain.

Week 11: Speaking in Tongues: Texts, Ideas, Religions, Commerce, Aesthetics. Inter Asian- interactions, mobilities and migrations. India in Asia and its post-modern representations.Literature as transnational and transregional archive.Discussion on Ghosh’sSea of Poppies.

Week 12: “Imagined Communities”: Oceanic and riverine networks, harbour sites, the imperial trajectory. The long history of British imperialism, the shaping history of cultural contact and competing ideologies.Discussions on Ghosh’sRiver of Smoke.

Week 13: The Opium Wars: Tradition, Technology, Trade, Territory.The Global British Empire, the fall of Imperial China and the death of Tianxiaweijong(what is under heaven for all). Semi colonialism and China, race and religion and the British Commonwealth in East and South East Asia. Discussions on Ghosh’sFlood of Fire