Introduction to South Asia

This course introduces students to South Asia through
an analysis of the heterogeneity, richness, and
complexity of the region’s conflicted pasts. Our
historical scope is vast and ambitious, starting with the
earliest urban settlements in about 2000BCE and
ending in the present. Though focused on “South
Asia,” the course problematizes the bounded areal
model by emphasizing the region’s enduring
connections to Eurasia, Africa, Southeast Asia, and
the broader Indian Ocean world. With connected
history as our method, the course asks students to
grapple with South Asia’s literary, religious, and
political histories as kinetic processes. This allows us to
ask probing questions about issues that have had, and
continue to have, major implications for the region––
and the world––today: sovereignty, power, gender,
community, devotion, piety, secularism, democracy,
violence, and the nation itself.