Modern India Through Narrative Forms

Instructor: Shankar Ramaswami (Dept. of South Asian Studies)
Fall 2014

This course will explore histories, politics, social relations, and subjectivities in modern India through close readings of novels, short stories, and autobiographies. The course will consider the depictions, understandings, and illuminations in these narrative forms of deprivation, conflicts, and intimate relations in villages; nationalism, civil disobedience, and Gandhi; Hindu-Muslim relations and experiences of Partition; and the workings of caste and gender relations in modern India. Readings will include works (in English translation) by Bibhutibhushan Banerji, Munshi Premchand, Rahi Masoom Reza, Saadat Hasan Manto, and U. R. Ananthamurthy.