The history of South Asia can be told in many ways. This course chooses to focus on the period between late Mughal/early colonial rule in the18th century and the partition of South Asia into separate nation-states in 1947. Even within this span of time, the many peoples and regions of the vast subcontinent could each individually populate a syllabus or thematic orientation to the study of South Asia. This course however does not mark time by the tick-tick-tick of political ‘events’ moving in time. Rather, it is an investigation into the basic categories of life and meaning that shaped South Asian societies: the political economy of land, of gender, of caste, of race, of labor, of knowledge formation & of migration.
- Teacher: Meghna Chaudhuri