* SAST 0210a / HIST 0737a, History of Indian Ocean Crossings  Nurfadzilah Yahaya

This seminar explores the history of the Indian Ocean from the Red Sea region to South Asia, and onward to Southeast Asia through two creative works by Amitav Ghosh. The first work is In an Antique Land, an autobiographical account of his time in Egypt as an anthropologist in the late twentieth century that he interspersed with that of the history of a Jewish merchant in Aden and Malabar in the twelfth century when Indian Ocean trade formed the backbone of international economy. The second book, Sea of Poppies is the first novel in his epic trilogy on the Indian Ocean, which traces the journey of a diverse group people from the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia and China during the nineteenth century. This seminar breaks out of conventional regional fields by closely following historical actors on the ground. Each session explores several core themes for historical research namely commerce, mobility, labor, climate, cosmopolitanism, colonialism, and modernization. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
TTh 1:05pm-2:20pm

SAST 2240b / HIST 1486b, India and Pakistan since 1947  Rohit De

Introduction to the history of the Indian subcontinent from 1947 to the present. Focus on the emergence of modern forms of life and thought, the impact of the partition on state and society, and the challenges of democracy and development. Transformations of society, economy, and culture; state building; economic policy.  HU  0 Course cr
MW 1:05pm-2:20pm

* SAST 2620a or b / AMST 3303a or b / EP&E 247 / ER&M 3530a or b / FILM 2980a or b, Digital War  Madiha Tahir

From drones and autonomous robots to algorithmic warfare, virtual war gaming, and data mining, digital war has become a key pressing issue of our times and an emerging field of study. This course provides a critical overview of digital war, understood as the relationship between war and digital technologies. Modern warfare has been shaped by digital technologies, but the latter have also been conditioned through modern conflict: DARPA (the research arm of the US Department of Defense), for instance, has innovated aspects of everything from GPS, to stealth technology, personal computing, and the Internet. Shifting beyond a sole focus on technology and its makers, this class situates the historical antecedents and present of digital war within colonialism and imperialism. We will investigate the entanglements between technology, empire, and war, and examine how digital war—also sometimes understood as virtual or remote war—has both shaped the lives of the targeted and been conditioned by imperial ventures. We will consider visual media, fiction, art, and other works alongside scholarly texts to develop a multidiscpinary perspective on the past, present, and future of digital war. none  HU, SO
HTBA

* SAST 3480a / PLSC 3469a, The Politics of Contemporary India  Adam Auerbach

India is home to one-sixth of the world’s population. It is the world’s largest democracy and one of its biggest economies. Since gaining independence from colonial rule in 1947, India has made important strides in reducing poverty, expanding public services, and boosting literacy, public health, and public infrastructure. India, however, presents a range of serious governance and development challenges. Its public institutions are often described as unresponsive to citizen needs, in part due to shortcomings in representation and capacity. Stubborn inequalities persist across ethnic and gender lines, fragmenting economic opportunity and political voice. Cities in India are rapidly growing without adequate planning. As a consequence, millions of people reside in India’s urban slums, defined by their informality and lack of access to basic public services. Climate change shocks—heat waves, flooding, drought—are expected to increase in frequency and severity, hampering development. Air pollution is causing alarming health crises and inadequate waste management is contaminating soil and water. The guiding objective of this course is for students to gain a deep understanding of political trends in post-1947 India. To situate the course’s material in larger theoretical frameworks, we will concurrently examine several major themes in comparative politics, including democratization, federalism, decentralization, electoral politics, ethnic conflict, gender, environmental politics, and the political economy of development. Therefore, in addition to area studies knowledge, students will build further expertise in comparative politics. Students will be expected to demonstrate effective writing, rigorous analytical thinking, and conceptual precision.
T 9:25am-11:20am

* SAST 4210b / HIST 3758b, Environmentalism from the Global South  Sunil Amrith

Most histories of the environmental movement still privilege the American and European experience. This research seminar examines the diverse forms of environmental thought and activism that have emerged from the global South—drawing examples from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America—since the early twentieth century. The course examines: the environmental legacies of colonialism, the role of ecology in anticolonial movements, early articulations of environmental justice in the 1970s, the role of violence and repression in state responses to environmental activism, the rise of increasingly networked environmental movements from the Global South that made themselves heard at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992—which took place 30 years ago, and the moral and political histories that underpin the negotiating stance of countries of the Global South in climate change negotiations. This class makes extensive use of primary sources, including material from the Yale collections and it straddles the boundaries between environmental, intellectual, and political history.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* SAST 4740a / ENGL 4838a / HIST 3441a, The Novel and the Nation: Reading India in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy  Priyasha Mukhopadhyay and Rohit De

This course pairs two interconnected phenomena: the rise of the Indian Republic and the birth of the postcolonial novel. Over the course of the semester, we read a single primary text: Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (1993). Set in the 1950s in the aftermath of India’s Independence and Partition, Seth’s encyclopaedic novel is the story of four families brought together by a mother’s search for a “suitable boy” for her daughter to marry. In the process, it builds a microcosm of an Indian society coming to terms with postcolonial statehood and weighing the aftereffects of British colonialism. Entwined in its plot about marriage, love, and relationships are some of the most urgent cultural and political concerns facing the new nation: legislative changes and land reforms, the violent aftermath of the Partition, secularism tainted by communal tensions, the disintegration of courtly forms of sociality, the reconstruction of city life, and the fate of the English novel in the postcolonial classroom. We read A Suitable Boy as literary critics and historians, pairing close readings of language and literary form with historical scholarship. Over the course of our discussions, we address the following questions: what is the relationship between the nation, the novel, and identity in the postcolonial world? How do we read narratives of “nation building” as literary and cultural constructions? What do we make of “literature” and “history” as disciplinary categories and formations? The seminar introduces students to methods of literary criticism and textual studies, and teaches them how to read a range of primary sources, from legislative debates, bureaucratic reports, newspapers, poetry, cinema, and radio.  HU
T 9:25am-11:20am

* SAST 4750a / AMST 3350a / ER&M 3519a / TDPS 3029a, Drama in Diaspora: South Asian American Theater and Performance  Shilarna Stokes

South Asian Americans have appeared on U.S. stages since the late nineteenth century, yet only in the last quarter century have plays and performances by South Asian Americans begun to dismantle dominant cultural representations of South Asian and South Asian American communities and to imagine new ways of belonging. This seminar introduces you to contemporary works of performance (plays, stand-up sets, multimedia events) written and created by U.S.-based artists of South Asian descent as well as artists of the South Asian diaspora whose works have had an impact on U.S. audiences. With awareness that the South Asian American diaspora comprises multiple, contested, and contingent identities, we investigate how artists have worked to manifest complex representations of South Asian Americans onstage, challenge institutional and professional norms, and navigate the perils and pleasures of becoming visible. No prior experience with or study of theater/performance required. Students in all years and majors welcome.  HU
T 4pm-5:55pm