24 courses with the subject MDES GU, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
MDES GU4049Climate and Empire4.00
Climate change destabilizes the ontic certainty of this world, time, and history. This course in MESAAS will introduce students to the literature on climate change and its relationship to ontology, religion, violence, politics, and gender. We will explore the resilience and limitations of various theoretical approaches as they relate to empirical cases. Students will become familiarized with important arguments that have been advanced to explain climate change in its more recent incarnations in the Middle East and Asia. How have different trajectories of understanding climate change led to different kinds of political cultures and governing institutions? Have some qualities of the “environment” or “climate” remained the same throughout history and across the globe? What is the role of colonialism in modern understandings of climate change? The core of this course will seek to develop a mode of conceptualizing the present by rendering relevant geological time in addition to historical time, earth’s history in addition to world’s history. The course begins with the question of how the “climate” has been historically and ethnographically conceptualized in various intellectual trajectories of human sciences. We consider how religion is connected to environmental change, how the “human” and “non human” are conceptualized in various ontologies, and how religious norms and ethics enact environmental practices. We interrogate the everyday sociality of climate adaption and how climate conflict informs social, political, and environmental citizenship. The course concludes by contemplating the creative ways of being in this new world. We study the innovative forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism (post- humanism) that emerge from the specter of environmental change
The historical significance of Marx lies not only in his reception in Germany or Europe, but across the world. But Marx’s thought emerged from a highly specific intellectual context of European thought. Therefore, reading Marx must have a contextual, German and European side, and, equally, a global reception side. The purpose of this course will be to read Marx’s texts closely, and to follow the trajectory of his ideas historically and therefore globally. In one sense, we understand what ‘doing’ political theory means more clearly in studying the struggles of Marx’s readers in addressing the question: how can reading Marx illuminate the historical analysis of very different societies – societies which were not in Europe, societies which were not based on a capitalist economy, societies that were not yet ‘modern’ in their economy, politics and culture. A part of the course will be about the Marxism of the ‘others’: American Black thinkers, and thinkers in China, India, Africa, the Middle East. To follow Marx’s thought historically is to read his thought globally. The course will be in three parts. The first part will read some texts of Western social theory from which the central questions of Marx’s theoretical reflections were drawn. Following a method of Indian philosophy in which philosophic arguments are always read in relation to its purvapaksha (arguments in response to which the philosophical doctrine was conceived and elaborated), we shall start with questions first introduced in Hobbes (individual) Locke (property and its relation to government) and Adam Smith (capitalism) in the British tradition, and Hegel (on history and capitalism) and Feuerbach (religion and estrangement) in the German tradition. We shall explore the central arguments from these thinkers which Marx contends with – at times accepting and elaborating them, or modifying them, or directly questioning and rejecting them. In the second part of the course, we shall closely read some texts from Marx, but also pair them with some of the major readings of their meanings from the Marxist tradition. Texts read will include the early journalistic writings, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Communist Manifesto, the Grundrisse, political writings, Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, reflections on non-European history on the basis of his notes on ‘pre-capitalist formations’ and ethnological manuscripts. In the final part of the course, we shall read major texts which show the different kinds of readings Marx’s work received in different parts of the world: Russian Communists, Asian Marxists from India and China, from the Middle east and Islamic societies, and from Africa. We shall end by readings of Marx from the West’s most intimate enemy: Black Marxists. Reading Marx historically is impossible without reading Marx globally. This section will also, necessarily, engage in more abstract questions about how we should read thought systems which originate in a particular thought ecology, but then circulates to entirely different settings of reading and political action
Within the literature on the history of capitalism there is a lively debate that seeks to explain the world-historical transition from feudal and tributary modes of production to the capitalist mode of production. Substantial issues raised in this debate include the question of whether capitalism can be characterized as a mode of production dominated by the exploitation of free labour; the role of international trade in the origin and development of capitalism; and the role of agriculture in promoting a transition to capitalism. Through the publication of two key texts in the late 1970s Robert Brenner's proposition that capitalism had its origins in English agriculture came to dominate the transition debate. More recently, however, there have been a number of publications that seek to challenge the Anglo-centric and Eurocentric tendencies of the entire transition debate. This course begins with the Brenner debates and then takes up revisions, critiques and challenges to that debate. Ultimately, the aim of the course is to more clearly understand the place of non-European polities and peoples in the history and development of capitalism
MDES GU4226Arabic Literature ＆ the Long 19th Century4.00
What came before the Arabic novel? How did authors writing in Arabic in the 19th century conceive of and debate the terms of modernity and literature? The purpose of this graduate seminar is first to engage with recent trends in scholarship on the Nahda ("Renaissance") and second to read the entirety of three significant works of Arabic literature in translation: al-Shidyaq's Leg Over Leg (1855), Khalil al-Khouri's Oh No! I am Not European! (1859-61), and Jurji Zaydan's Tree of Pearls, Queen of Egypt (1914). Knowledge of Arabic is not required, but an optional Arabic reading group will run concurrently with the class
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement This course works along a number of axial structures that aim to let texts voice their informing theoretical, political, and poetic strategies. It draws on war narratives in other parts of the world, especially Vietnam, insofar as these find their way into Arabic writing. A poetics of prose gives these narratives the power of literary production that makes them more readable, appealing, and provocative than ordinary journalistic reporting. Through close readings of a number of Arabic war novels and some long narrative poems, this course proposes to address war in its varieties not only as liberation movements in Algeria and Palestine, but also as an engagement with invasions, as in Iraqi narratives of war, or as conflict as was the case between Iran and Iraq, 1980-1988, as proxy wars in other parts of the region , or ‘civil’ wars generated and perpetuated by big powers. Although writers are no longer the leaders of thought as in the first half of the 20th century, they resume different roles of exposition, documentation, reinstatement of identities, and geographical and topographical orientation. Narrators and protagonists are not spectators but implicated individuals whose voices give vent to dreams, desires, intimations, and expectations. They are not utterly passive, however. Behind bewilderment and turbulence, there is a will to expose atrocity and brutality. Writing is an effort to regain humanity in an inhuman situation. The course is planned under thematic and theoretical divisions: one that takes writing as a deliberate exposure of the censored and repressed; another as a counter shock and awe strategy [ implemented under this name in the wars on Iraq] whereby brutalities are laid bare; and a third that claims reporting in order to explore its limits and complicity. On the geographical level, it takes Algeria, Palestine as locations for liberation movements; Iraq as a site of death; Egypt as the space for statist duplicity and camouflage; and Lebanon as an initial stage for a deliberate exercise in a seemingly civil war. A number of films will be shown as part of students’ presentations.
This course examines a set of questions that have shaped the study of the politics of the modern Middle East. It looks at the main ways those questions have been answered, exploring debates both in Western academic scholarship and among scholars and intellectuals in the region itself. For each question, the course offers new ways of thinking about the issue or ways of framing it in different terms. The topics covered in the course include: the kinds of modern state that emerged in the Middle East and the ways its forms of power and authority were shaped; the birth of economic development as a way of describing the function and measuring the success of the state, and the changing metrics of this success; the influence of oil on the politics of the region; the nature and role of Islamic political movements; the transformation of the countryside and the city and the role of rural populations and of urban protest in modern politics; and the politics of armed force and political violence in the region, and the ways in which this has been understood. The focus of the course will be on the politics of the twentieth century, but many topics will be traced back into developments that occurred in earlier periods, and several will be explored up to the present. The course is divided into four parts, each ending with a paper or exam in which participants are asked to analyze the material covered. Each part of the course has a geographical focus on a country or group of countries and a thematic focus on a particular set of questions of historical and political analysis. Discussion Section Required
MDES GU4263Colonial Encounters: Thinking through Time and Space4
This course focuses on issues related to colonial encounters over time, space and geographies. The course is organized around issues that emerge from thinking about the past and present of colonialism and how those encounters affect and frame epistemological as well as ontological questions. We will explore the themes and lines of thought that are helpful in thinking about our contemporary conditions in terms of colonial history. As such, this course examines different types of colonialisms in their various forms and iterations over time and space and their attendant narrations and stories regarding the relationship to the past and present. This course is also about the various ways, means and methods that colonized people(s) confront(ed) colonial violence, domination, and other forms of power. Throughout the semester we ask questions related to histories of colonialisms, comparative colonial settings, settler colonial trajectories, and indigenous responses to settler power. The course will travel in theory and space, in terms of geography and temporality, while prioritizing a focus on the Middle East.
MDES GU4328The Resilience of Memory: Armenian Genocide in Words and Images4.00
Genocide has indelibly marked the last century. Survivors of these crimes have sought justice and reparations, while also struggling to keep alive the memory of all that was lost. Words and images are employed in this struggle. The literary, performing, and visual arts play key roles in resisting the destruction of memory. Genocide is a crime whose aim is not just the annihilation of biological individuals but of social groups and their cultural heritage. Words (in the form of poetry, memoir, drama, fiction) and images (in the form of photography, film, painting) are used to combat the forgetting, the denial, and the distorting of genocidal crimes. This course will explore the ways these forms of memory resilience work in the case of the Armenian Genocide. While often under-appreciated, Armenians began a process of reflection upon and resistance against their cultural loss in the decades after 1915. Yet it took another generation for artists and writers to foreground this resistance in their creative output. In parallel to the Jewish response to the Holocaust, the 1960’s and 70’s saw the awakening of a greater Armenian public response to the genocide. Along with memorialization and demands for justice, a heightened critical reflection on the meaning of loss took place. Historical studies of the genocide multiplied adding to our understanding of the nature and causes of the violence. Alongside such scholarship the broader discipline of memory studies has immeasurable added to our understanding of 1915. The literature and critical study of the Holocaust and other genocides will help us understand the Armenian resilience of memory. The art and literature we explore will be supplemented by dialogue (in-person or virtually) with writers and artists whose works of resistance continue to be created today
MDES GU4347Origins of Armenian Art: Creating an Identity4
Organized around the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s international loan exhibition Armenia! that will be held during the fall semester 2018, the course will be an interdisciplinary exploration of the creation of a sense of self-identity for the Armenian people through its material culture. Manuscript illuminations, liturgical objects, architectural sculpture, ceramics, textiles and other media will be studied to determine the means by which the Armenian people at the level of elite and popular culture identified themselves and positioned themselves in terms of neighboring, or dominating, cultures and on the trade routes they established across the globe. Emphasis will be laid on the role of religion in Armenian self-identification. Relevant works from other cultures in the Museum’s encyclopedic collections will be used for comparative study. Students will do a paper on an Armenian work selected from the exhibition and present an aspect of their research in class. Hands on experience with the Museum’s works of art will allow consideration of means of manufacture as well as style and iconography.
MDES GU4349Concentration Camps from Cuba to East Asia3
Forcibly moving civilians to designated areas as a wartime measure has constituted a widely practiced military strategy for centuries. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, colonial powers increasingly provided more structure and organization to these policies of relocation and internment in the Americas, Africa, and East Asia. This course provides a social history of civilian internment and mass murder from late-19th century colonial cases to World War II. Through case studies of the Spanish-Cuban war, the South African War, the Philippines-American War, the genocide of the Herrero and Nama in Southwest Africa, the Armenian Genocide, and the Holocaust, the course traces the evolution of the concentration camp from a counter-insurgency strategy in wartime to a weapon of mass murder. The course also examines the internment of Japanese Americans, and the Japanese “comfort stations” in comparative perspective.
This 4000-level course examines how societies grapple with the legacy of mass violence, through an exploration of historical texts, memoirs, textbooks, litigation, and media reports and debates on confronting the past. Focusing on case studies of the Herero Genocide, the Armenian genocide during WWI, and the Holocaust and the Comfort Women during WWII, students investigate the crime and its sequelae, looking at how societies deal with skeletons in their closets ( engaging in silence, trivialization, rationalization, and denial to acknowledgment, apology, and repair); surveying responses of survivors and their descendants (with particular attention to intergeneration transmission of trauma, forgiveness, resentment, and the pursuit of redress); and dissecting public debates on modern day issues that harken back to past atrocities
This course will combine study of long-term historical sociology with more short term understanding of policies and their possible effects. Though its main purpose will be to provide students with an understanding of politics after independence, it will argue, methodologically, that this understanding should be based on a study of historical sociology – plotting long-terms shifts in the structure of social power. The course will start with analyses of the structures of power and ideas about political legitimacy in pre-modern India, and the transformations brought by colonialism into that order. After a brief study of the nature of political order under the colonial state, the courses will focus primarily on the history of the democratic state after independence. Fall 2026: MDES GU4601 Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment MDES 4601 001/10786 T 2:10pm - 4:00pm C01 Knox Hall Sudipta Kaviraj 4 12/20
Since the ascent of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of India in 2014, Hindu nationalism has dominated headlines concerning India across the globe. However, the influence that Hindu nationalism has had in shaping beliefs about citizenship, belonging, religion, and the nation has a history that predates the Modi regime by around a hundred and fifty years. This class will examine the history of Hindu nationalism from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century by examining primary texts and academic analysis. This class will not only read the writings of key Hindu nationalist thinkers but will also examine how different media and technologies have affected how Hindu nationalists communicate with different publics. In particular, this class will examine topics such as space/ geography, caste and community, gender, technology and media, and diasporic Hindutva
What is the relationship between homoeroticism and homosociality? How does this relationship form conceptions of gender and sexuality in ways that might be historically unfamiliar and culturally or regionally specific? We pursue these questions through the lens of friendship and its relationship to ideas and expressions of desire, love, and loyalty in pre-modern times. We begin by considering the intellectual basis of the modern idea of friendship as a private, personal relationship, and trace it back to earlier times when it was often a public relationship of social and political significance. Some of these relationships were between social equals, while many were unequal forms (like patronage) that could bridge social, political or parochial differences. Thinking through the relationships and possible distinctions between erotic love, romantic love and amity (love between friends), we will draw on scholarly works from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, particularly philosophy, sociology, political theory, literature, history, and art history. We will attend to friendship’s work in constituting, maintaining and challenging various social and political orders in a variety of Asian contexts (West, Central, South and East Asian), with comparative reference to scholarship on European and East Asian contexts. Primary source materials will include philosophy, religious manuals, autobiographies, popular love stories, heroic epics, mystical poetry, mirror for princes, paintings, material objects of exchange, and architectural monuments, largely from Islamic and Asian contexts
History, Politics, Literature, Society -- all these are studied as within national, or, at best, regional frames. What other scales and approaches might be appropriate to the study of particular phenomena or categories in the past, as well as some of the challenges of the present? This course introduces advanced undergraduates and graduate students to transregional studies. We explore topics, approaches, methods, problems, and disciplines through which we can cross the regions, particularly the regions of MESAAS. Case studies will consider thinking through and with oceanic studies, circulation, diaspora, shared hermeneutical traditions, lingua francas and their stories (world literatures?), and connected histories to rethink concepts of societies, collective affiliations, cosmopolitanism, and world history. Undergraduates must have taken at least one of the following: Intro to Islamic Civ (UN 2003), Intro to Indian Civ (UN 2357), African Before Colonialism (UN 2915), Societies and Cultures across the Indian Ocean (UN 3445), or some equivalent (check with me)
MDES GU4634Sound and Listening Cultures of the Indian Subcontinent4.00
This course will explore major themes in the growing field of Sound Studies with a focus on the rich history of sound and varied cultures of sound and listening in the Indian subcontinent. The main questions that we will address include: how have political, commercial, and cultural movements shaped what the diverse populations of South Asia listen to and how they listen? How have different forms of media shaped/ informed listening experiences in South Asia? How do listening practices and cultures from the subcontinent differ from those in other regions? In this class we will listen to the human voice, rumor/gossip, gramophone, loud speakers, radio, film, and mp3. We will discuss the role political speeches, film songs, and devotional songs in shaping South Asian politics and culture in the twentieth-century as the subcontinent transitioned from colonial rule to nation-states. Drawing on the interdisciplinary nature of Sound Studies, we will read works from across the disciplines—anthropology, ethnomusicology, Religious Studies, Media Studies, and history. Organized thematically, this course will focus on the twentieth century, but the readings will address earlier time periods. This is an upper-level undergraduate and graduate (MA) seminar. Students are expected to have some background in South Asian studies/history or media/sounds studies. The class will meet once a week for discussion of readings. In addition to readings there will be a several required film screenings or listening activities
What is the relation between cinema and colonialism? This seminar approaches cinema as a dynamic historical agent that aided, negotiated, refracted, and contested the mechanisms and meanings of colonialism in South Asia. We will study cinema as technology, as industry, and as cultural form, paying attention to questions of film finance, on-screen representation, production infrastructures, circuits of distribution, and sites of exhibition. We will watch films made by British ethnographers, Indian expats, Hollywood orientalists, and South Asian nationalists to study how film served as a key weapon of imperial propaganda as well as anticolonial resistance. From orientalist films that constructed the colony as exotic and dangerous, to the spatial uses of Indian films to reinforce race inequalities in the diaspora (eg. East Africa), cinema is deeply imbricated with colonial strategies of racial, gendered, and caste-based othering. This is a history of cinema as a history of empire; where cinema is not just a text to be read but a cultural, industrial, and social network of power relations.
The Mughal period was one of the most dynamic eras in world history, when India was the meeting place of many cultures. Of Timurid ancestry, the earliest Mughal rulers drew upon the heritage of Central Asia in their ruling styles and cultural practices, but they would soon adapt to the complexities of their Indian milieu, which had longstanding traditions that were a blend of Sanskrit and Persian, Hindu and Muslim idioms. European culture, whether filtered through Jesuit sermons, itinerant merchants, or Flemish engravings, was also making inroads into India during this period. This course is a broad cultural history of Mughal India as seen from a range of perspectives and sources. We consider the Mughals’ major achievements in visual culture as manifested in painting and architecture, as well as exploring diverse topics in religion, literature, politics, and historiography. Yet another approach is to listen to the voices of the Mughal rulers as recorded in their memoirs, as well as investigating the signal contributions of the dynasty’s women.
The course will examine the six "eras" that help define Pakistan's history, and will highlight political, economic and institutional developments. The completion of this course should prepare students for further and more advanced work on South Asia.
MDES GU4654Gender, Power and Culture in Early Modern India4
Explores gender, culture, power in India, c. 1500-1800 by reading theoretical works on gender and sexuality, historical scholarship relevant to early modern India, and a variety of primary sources. Topics include morality, mysticism, devotion, desire, kingship, heroism, homosocial relations, and homoerotic practices. The focus is largely on Persianate contexts, in conversation with broader South Asian and Islamic studies. This discussion seminar is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, with some previous background in South Asian, Islamic, or gender studies.
MDES GU4655India after 1947: Democracy and Majoritarianism4.00
This course will explore recent histories of post-independence India, focusing on the first three decades of independence (1947-1977) following the end of British colonial rule. Until rather recently, most histories of South Asia concluded with independence, casting, perhaps unconsciously, the end of British rule as the end of history in the region. However, in recent years, we have witnessed a boom of historical writing on post-independence India. In this class, we will analyze this emerging scholarship and focus on the themes of democracy and majoritarianism. We will read about the establishment of universal franchise in 1950s India, the writing and implementation of the constitution, and the country’s experiments with various economic plans. At the same time, we will study the Indian state’s often violent integration of regions originally outside Britain’s direct domain, including the princely states of Kashmir and Hyderabad, and the development of what scholars have described as new forms of colonialism in the region after 1947. Likewise, we will study the growth of majoritarian ideologies and the continued struggle against caste oppression, all while considering India’s place in the larger Cold War. Throughout the class, we will remain attendant to aesthetic developments in media and literature during this period. While the course focuses on India—or more specifically on various communities’ interactions with the Indian state—we will also study developments in Pakistan (and Bangladesh after 1971) and other neighboring states, recognizing that their shared histories did not end with Partition
This course will focus on the Indo-Islamic literary traditions in South Asia, and particularly in what is now India and Pakistan, focusing on Urdu literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course will emphasize the rhetorical and performative history of poetic forms in the subcontinent (including the forms of the Ghazal and Nauha, among others) and will consider how classical poetic tropes continue to inform contemporary mass culture in India and Pakistan—particularly in the song lyrics of Hindi/Bollywood cinema. The course will also consider more contemporary prose genres of Urdu-language writing (in English translation), including the literature of the Partition and the works of contemporary authors such as Naiyer Masud and Saima Iram. Through a comparative study of texts in different genres and at different moments in history, students will consider questions such as: What aspects of contemporary literary culture in India and Pakistan can be traced to early establishment of Islamic culture in the region? How have the poetic conventions of Indo-Islamic poetry continued to resonate? How did the interaction of Hindu and Muslim literary, musical, visual, and religious cultures in the Mughal era help to generate the rich profusion of literature and music and cultural tolerance in this period? Most of our readings in this course will Urdu literature in English translation. We will also, however, read some secondary sources in order to help us better understand the primary sources
MDES GU4840Gender and Religion in Post-Colonial South Asia4.00
This course will examine various roles that a religion can play in shaping its believers’ socio-cultural and political identities on the basis of their natural/social differences i.e. sex and gender. An attempt will be made to search for historical explanations of gendered identities and social anxieties in the context of various religious beliefs of communities living in the South Asian region. Following a series of historical events combined with theoretical approaches which had emerged after the departure of the colonial rulers, this course will explore the following themes; (a) role of religion in construction of post colonial state and question of gender; (b) formation of state policies and challenges of existing realities; (c) representation or absence of women in post colonial political institutions. The central argument of the course is that, for historical understanding of a set of beliefs and practices regarding gender relations and women’s status in any religious group, one needs to examine the historical context and socio-economic basis of that particular religion. By using the notion of gender, class and historical feminist discourses as tools of analysis, this course intends to understand and explain existing perceptions, misperceptions, myths and realities regarding gender relations and South Asian women’s situations in the colonial past which has shaped their post colonial present. It is crucial to understand Intersectionality of institutions of authority such as, patriarchal state and controlling religious beliefs that have shaped and continue to reshape “womanhood” in South Asia. In this context, it is necessary to examine how women have challenged, questioned and resisted their subservient status through confrontation, reinterpretation and negotiation in the world of academia and media. This course revolves around a few major questions; How have the texts and re-interpretations constructed Hindu, Muslim and Budhist femininity and masculinity? How have post colonial states and communities applied religious texts to control women’s body and sexuality? How have the institutions of authority kept alive customs and traditions of veiling, segregation, family honor, sexual “purity” etc.? How have the colonial and post colonial politics affected women’s mobility and space in public and private? How can historical re-reading of the religious texts challenge the role of patriarchy and misogyny in the South Asian politics, culture and education? It is expected that this course will enable students to (a) understand the main assumptions of gender and feminist theories and their importance in the study of history of religion; (b) acquire knowledge of the historical contexts, textual teachings and actual practices related to gender and women’s lives in South Asia; (c) analyze existing situations and current practices regarding gender issues in these regions; and (d) compare various scholarly inquiries, feminist discourses and conforming/confronting voices of South Asian women emerging in the regional and global contexts
MDES GU4952Leaving the Ottoman Empire: Ottoman Americans4.00
This course will examine the experience of Ottoman American communities before, during, and after their migration to the United States, with a particular focus on Ottoman Armenians pre- and post-genocide. Through close readings of the scholarship on Ottoman Armenian, Turkish, Jewish, Arab, and Greek immigration, we will ask: what global forces compelled Ottoman journeys to America (e.g. economic opportunity, Christian imperialism, state-sponsored violence, interethnic strife)? And what ideologies informed the way these migrants were received in a new country (e.g. nativism, nationalism, Orientalism, philhellenism)? In answering these questions and raising new ones, we will also aim to understand how Ottoman American immigration stories both fit into and challenge the existing scholarship on “American immigration” as well as race, whiteness, and citizenship studies. Throughout the course, we will pay special attention to the experience of Ottoman American immigrants in New York City through field trips, museums, and other primary and secondary source materials
