SOCIETIES/CULTRS: INDIAN OCEAN

This course introduces the Indian Ocean as a region linking the Middle East, East Africa, South and Southeast Asia. With a focus on both continuities and rupture from the medieval to the modern period, we study select cultures and societies brought into contact through interregional migration and travel from the 10th to 20th centuries. Different types of people - nobles, merchants, soldiers, statesmen, sailors, scholars, slaves - experienced mobility in different ways. How did different groups of people represent such mobilities? What kinds of political, economic, and social cooperation, accommodation or conflict did different Indian Ocean encounters engender? We read some of the newest humanities and social science scholarship, as well as primary sources ranging from manuscript illustrations, sailor’s stories, merchant letters, travelogues, pilgrimage accounts, colonial documents, memoirs, and diplomatic accounts.