Accessing Electronic Resources
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Required Texts
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Mirrorwork by Call Number: PR9494.9 .V56 1997ISBN: 0805057099Publication Date: 1997-08-01This unique anthology presents thirty-two selections by Indian authors writing in English over the past half-century. Selected by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West, these novel excerpts, stories, and memoirs illuminate wonderful writing by authors often overlooked in the West. -
Midnight's Children by Call Number: PR6068 .U757 M5 1995ISBN: 0679444629Publication Date: 1995-10-17A classic novel, in which the man who calls himself the "bomb of Bombay" chronicles the story of a child and a nation that both came into existence in 1947--and examines a whole people's capacity for carrying inherited myths and inventing new ones. -
The God of Small Things by Call Number: PR9499.3 .R59 G63 1997ISBN: 0679457313Publication Date: 1997-04-22The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes--Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.
Overview
This interdisciplinary class will survey South Asian literature and film, focusing mainly on the period of the mid-twentieth century through today, covering a wide range of cultural spaces, historical events, languages, and socio-cultural dynamics from the Indian continent and its diaspora, specifically: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. We will consider a range of cultural texts throughout this course, including short stories, poetry, novels, and films, which represent crucial historical events in this region, including the Independence movement in British India, the partition of 1947 and the humanitarian crisis it spurred, the tumultuous post-Independence periods in India and Pakistan and the Indo-Pakistan 1971 war that led to the founding of Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi’s brutal “Emergency” period in the late 1970s, Sri Lanka’s civil war in the 1970s and 80s, and the ongoing, complex conflict over Kashmir in India and Pakistan. Some of the writers we read foreground the diaspora in and immigration to London and the US, others focus on gender, sexuality, the status of women, caste, and the rights of queer individuals. In addition, while many of the texts we will read have been written in English (and we will discuss the politics of writing in English), others have been translated into English. The films we watch will be in Hindi, but will have English subtitles—therefore proficiency in a language other than English is not required for this class.
Films
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Such a Long JourneyAn upstanding father in Bombay tries to lead a virtuous life, while the world he thinks he knows begins to crumble all around him.