CHRIST (Deemed to University), Bangalore

DEPARTMENT OF business-studies-and-social-sciences

bangalore-bannerghatta-road-campus

Syllabus for
Master of Arts (English and Cultural Studies)
Academic Year  (2020)

 
1 Semester - 2020 - Batch
Course Code
Course
Type
Hours Per
Week
Credits
Marks
BMEC131 INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES Core Courses 4 4 100
BMEC132 NARRATIVES Core Courses 4 4 100
BMEC133 RESEARCH & WRITING Core Courses 4 4 100
BMEC141A MEMORY, HISTORY, NARRATIVES Discipline Specific Elective Courses 4 4 100
BMEC141B REVISITING MYTHOLOGIES Discipline Specific Elective Courses 4 4 100
BMEC141C LANGUAGE AND PERFORMATIVITY Discipline Specific Elective Courses 4 4 100
BMEC141D CURRICULUM, PEDAGOGY, ASSESSMENT Discipline Specific Elective Courses 4 4 100
2 Semester - 2020 - Batch
Course Code
Course
Type
Hours Per
Week
Credits
Marks
BMEC231 GENDER AND INTERSECTIONALITY Core Courses 4 4 100
BMEC232 CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY Core Courses 4 4 100
BMEC233 POSTCOLONIAL SPATIALITIES Core Courses 4 4 100
BMEC241A MATERIAL CULTURE STUDIES Discipline Specific Elective Courses 4 4 100
BMEC241B CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Discipline Specific Elective Courses 4 4 100
BMEC241C VISUAL CULTURE Discipline Specific Elective Courses 4 4 100
3 Semester - 2019 - Batch
Course Code
Course
Type
Hours Per
Week
Credits
Marks
BMEC331A NATION, BOUNDARIES, IDENTITIES - 4 4 100
BMEC331B LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN INDIA - 4 4 100
BMEC332A DEMOCRACY AND CULTURE - 4 4 100
BMEC332B WRITING LIVES: GENRES OF SELF NARRATIVE - 4 4 100
BMEC333A CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP - 4 4 100
BMEC333B INTRODUCTION TO PUBLISHING - 4 4 100
BMEC341 TRANSLATION STUDIES - 4 4 100
BMEC342 CULTURAL DISABILITY STUDIES - 4 4 100
BMEC343 SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY - 4 4 100
BMEC344 POPULAR CULTURE IN INDIA - 4 4 100
BMEC345 URBAN NARRATIVES - 4 4 100
4 Semester - 2019 - Batch
Course Code
Course
Type
Hours Per
Week
Credits
Marks
BMEC472 THE CULTURE OF FOOD - 4 4 100
BMEC473 QUEER ECOLOGIES - 4 4 100
BMEC474 DIGITAL MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY - 4 16 100
    

    

Introduction to Program:
The Masters of Arts programme in English and Cultural Studies aims to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on literary and cultural texts and contexts. The papers offered provide a range of perspectives for understanding literature and culture through relevant frameworks and paradigms in cultural studies. Texts and ideologies selected for study are aimed at creating discursive spaces within as well as outside the classroom, encouraging learners to investigate the contexts in which they live. In keeping with Christ University?s vision of excellence, this course is upto-date with contemporary debates within theory as well as practice.

Programme Outcome/Programme Learning Goals/Programme Learning Outcome:

PO1: Display domain expertise in English and Cultural Studies through independent study, completion of coursework, and execution of research projects.

PO2: Generate research outputs that reflect a comprehensive understanding of research methodologies, approaches, and skills through the execution of research projects and formulation of research papers, critical essays, etc.

PO3: Apply critical thinking skills through analysis of texts and immediate socio-cultural contexts by applying interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives in research papers, presentations, class discussions, and debates.

PO4: Exhibit the ability to build upon qualities of enterprise, critical, and creative imagination to engage with the contemporary contexts by undertaking MOOC courses and internships.

PO5: Practice interpersonal and effective communication skills in both personal and professional domains through collaborative or external projects related to writing, content creation, service learning, teaching, policy development, publishing, translation, and other areas.

PO6: Develop an awareness of diversities (cultural, linguistic, racial, gendered, caste-based, dis/abilities, etc) and know how to engage with these productively through assignments, coursework, and independent projects.

PO7: Demonstrate the ability to spearhead individual and collaborative projects to effectively contribute towards building a sustainable and egalitarian society through various participatory engagements.

PO8: Evaluate and engage with qualities of effective citizenship to act with an informed awareness of issues to engage with the community using expertise drawn from the discipline and undertake initiatives that encourage equity and growth for all through independent, collaborative, and creative works.

Assesment Pattern

CIA + ESE

CIA (Weight)

ESE (Weight)

 100

70 (65+5)

30

Examination And Assesments

Assessments and evaluation will be a mix of end-of-term submissions; continuous internal assessments; as well as written examinations for the mid-semester and end-semester examinations. 

The Internal assessment carries a value of 70% of the total assessment, while the ESE carries a value of 30%

BMEC131 - INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

This course will introduce students to basic concepts and theoretical developments within Cultural Studies, with the aim of imparting critical perspectives, to help them engage with their own cultural landscapes. It provides a foundational introduction to some of the key ideas, issues, and theories that have influenced Cultural Studies, and attempts to especially interrogate these debates from our own contexts in contemporary India.

Course objectives:

  1. Introduce students to significant debates and theorists within Cultural Studies

  2. Enable students to engage with these debates from their own immediate

    vantage points

  3. Familiarise students to core methodologies of narrativising the past and the

    present through a Cultural Studies approach

Course Outcome

 

  1. Use Cultural Studies approaches to reflect upon our own immediate contexts through assignments and class exercises.

  2. Display adequate understanding of and familiarity with the core debates within the discipline through written submissions and class presentations.

  3. Develop habits of independent learning through research projects and critical analysis.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:8
Culture as Concept
 

 

This unit will look at the various meanings associated with the word ‘culture' and explore ways of understanding the relationship between culture and society.

Readings
Niranjana, Tejaswini, P. Sudhir, and Vivek Dhareshwar: ‘Introduction’,
Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India.
Williams, Raymond: ‘Culture’,
Keywords.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:6
Cultural Studies
 

 

This unit explores the emergence of Cultural Studies in India, with some reference to its development in the UK and North America. It focuses specifically on narratives of Cultural Studies in the Indian context.

Readings
Vinay Lal: ‘Introduction’,
South Asian Cultural Studies: A Bibliography. Madhava Prasad: ‘Cultural Studies in India: Reasons and a History’. Rashmi Sawhney: ‘Decolonising Cultural Studies’, Artha.
Grossberg, Lawrence. ‘Cultural Studies in the Future Tense’.

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:8
Nation and Representation
 

 

This module introduces key debates surrounding the idea of the nation. An important discussion the unit will deal with is the contested nature of nation and nationalism.

Readings
Ernst Renan: ‘What is a Nation?’
Romila Thapar: From
On Nationalism.
Aloysius G: From
Nationalism without a Nation.
Partha Chatterjee: ‘Whose Imagined Community?’
A S Rathore and Ashis Nandy: ‘Introduction’,
Vision for a Nation: Paths and Perspectives.

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:6
Subaltern Studies
 

 

This unit will look at how the Western concept of ‘class’ is reworked into the idea of the ‘subaltern’ within Indian Historiography and Cultural Studies.

Readings:
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
Vivek Chibber: ‘Revisiting Subaltern Studies
’, EPW.
Dipesh Chakrabarty: ‘In Retrospect: Subaltern Studies and the Future Past’

Unit-5
Teaching Hours:8
The Politics of Identity: Caste
 

 

This module shall introduce students to debates around ‘identity’ as an important factor in shaping ideas of cultural production and consumption, with a focus on the peculiar notion of caste in India.

Readings:
Ambedkar, BR: Extracts from
Annhilation of Caste.
Guru, Gopal: ‘Liberal Democracy in India and the Dalit Critique’.
Ashraf, Ajaz: ‘Three reports on the Story of Dalit Journalists’,
The Hoot. http://www.thehoot.org/media-watch/media-practice/the-untold-story-of-dalit-journalists- 6956
http://www.thehoot.org/media-watch/media-practice/caste-on-the-campus-6959 http://www.thehoot.org/media-watch/media-practice/farewell-to-media-dreams-6962
Arun Mathavan, Chennai Photo Biennieal - https://scroll.in/magazine/915568/photos-in-tamil-nadu-dalit-sanitation-workers- are-told-to-help-doctors-perform-autopsies
Screening/ Discussion : Court (Chaitanya Tamhane, 2014, Marathi)

Unit-6
Teaching Hours:10
The Politics of Identity: race
 

 

This module looks at how the critical category of ‘race’ has been understood in the global context, further querying its relevance within Indian society.

Readings:
Gilroy, Paul (1992) Short Extract from
The Black Atlantic
Leggon: ‘Race and Ethnicity: A Global Perspective’
Screening/ Discussion:
Sudani From Nigeria (Zakariya Mohammed, 2018, Malyalam)

Mary Kom (Omung Kumar, 2014, Hindi) https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-the-race-for-mary-kom-2021820

Unit-7
Teaching Hours:8
The Politics of identity: Masculinities
 

 

This unit will examine how gendered identities are formed and performed. Readings:
Mick Leach: ‘The Politics of Masculinity: An overview of contemporary theory’. Mangesh Kulkarni: ‘Reconstructing Indian Masculinities’

Gandhi, Savarkar, Godse – selected readings will be provided in class. Ashis Nandy: ‘Pramathesh Chandra Barua and the Origins of the Terribly Effeminate, Maudlin, Self-destructive Heroes of Indian Cinema’.

Unit-8
Teaching Hours:6
The Politics of Identity: language
 

 

As a fundamentally multilingual state, linguistic identities form an important part of cultural
Devy, G.N: ‘The Being of Bhasha: A General Introduction’

Madhava Prasad: ‘Republic of Babel: Language and Political Subjectivity in Free India 

 

Text Books And Reference Books:

Vinay Lal: ‘Introduction’, South Asian Cultural Studies: A Bibliography. Madhava Prasad: ‘Cultural Studies in India: Reasons and a History’. Rashmi Sawhney: ‘Decolonising Cultural Studies’, Artha.

Grossberg, Lawrence. ‘Cultural Studies in the Future Tense’.Niranjana, Tejaswini, P. Sudhir, and Vivek Dhareshwar: ‘Introduction’, Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India.
Williams, Raymond: ‘Culture’,
KeywordsErnst Renan: ‘What is a Nation?’

Romila Thapar: From On Nationalism.
Aloysius G: From
Nationalism without a Nation.
Partha Chatterjee: ‘Whose Imagined Community?’
A S Rathore and Ashis Nandy: ‘Introduction’,
Vision for a Nation: Paths and Perspectives

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Vinay Lal: ‘Introduction’, South Asian Cultural Studies: A Bibliography. Madhava Prasad: ‘Cultural Studies in India: Reasons and a History’. Rashmi Sawhney: ‘Decolonising Cultural Studies’, Artha.

Grossberg, Lawrence. ‘Cultural Studies in the Future Tense’.Niranjana, Tejaswini, P. Sudhir, and Vivek Dhareshwar: ‘Introduction’, Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India.
Williams, Raymond: ‘Culture’, 
KeywordsErnst Renan: ‘What is a Nation?’

Romila Thapar: From On Nationalism.
Aloysius G: From 
Nationalism without a Nation.
Partha Chatterjee: ‘Whose Imagined Community?’
A S Rathore and Ashis Nandy: ‘Introduction’, 
Vision for a Nation: Paths and Perspectives

Evaluation Pattern

 

CIA I & III (20x2 = 40 marks): class assignment

Mid-semester exam (30 marks): presentation of a 1500 word research paper along with a written submission. May be held in the form of a 2-day symposium.

End-semester exam (30 marks): submission of the final 3000 word research paper on a topic approved by the faculty before mid-term.

*This is a submission paper.

BMEC132 - NARRATIVES (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Course Description:

 

This course introduces students to narrative forms across a range of creative mediums such as literature, photography, cinema, visual arts, video games and so on. The course aims to familiarize students with methods and approaches to reading, understanding and experiencing aspects of narrative and narratology in a wide range of forms, in order to introduce students to the inter-dependencies as well as distinctiveness of narrative construction across these mediums.

 

Course Objectives:

 

  • Introduce students to a range of narrative styles across media formats
  • Foreground the cultural specificities within which narrative styles develop
  • Engage with questions of ephemerality and impermanence in performance art

 

 

 

 

Course Outcome

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the fundamentals of story-telling and meaning-construction across a variety of narrative forms and mediums.

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the specificities of the socio-cultural and political contexts within which different narrative forms are produced and circulated.

  • Develop competencies towards critical analysis, research, and communication skills.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:10
Introducing Narrative
 

A General introduction to the course drawing upon foundational debates in the field of Narratology.

Readings:

 

M. Bal (1997) Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd Ed. University of Toronto Press.

M. Fludernik (2009) An Introduction to Narratology. Routledge.

 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:10
Literary Narratives
 

 

This unit explores the modes of the most popular modern literary form -- the novel -- and the social contexts within which it developed in India as well as in Europe.

Readings:

I. Watt (2015[1957]) The Rise of the Novel. London: Penguin.

M. Kundera: The Art of the Novel

M. Mukherjee (1985) Realism and Reality: the Novel and Society in India. Delhi: OUP

 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:20
Visual Narratives
 

 

This unit looks at a number of visual forms such as photography, cinema, video art, and folk art to understand how narrative theory works in these mediums.

Readings:

Utpal Kumar Banerjee (2008) “The Subtle Art of Story-telling,” Indian Literature, 52 (4): 147-152

R. Sawhney (2018) “Shadowing the Image Archive: Inside Nalini Malani’s Shadow Plays,” MIRAJ 7(2): 324-34.

G. M. Sheikh (1995) “Viewer’s View: Looking at Pictures” in Niranjana et al. eds. Interrogating Modernity, pp. 143-154.

R. Srivatsan (1993) “Imaging Truth and Desire: Photography and the Visual Field in India” in Niranjana et. al. eds. Interrogating Modernity. Pp 155-198.

D. Bordwell ( 2007) “Three Dimensions of Film Narrative” in Poetics of Cinema.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/books/poetics.php

 

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:10
Impermanent Narratives
 

 

This unit engages with transitory or ephemeral narratives as constructed through performing art, examining how the body as the canvas/text transforms our understanding of narratives.

Readings

P. Phelan (2005) “Shards of a History of Performance Art: Pollock and Namuth, Through a Glass, Darkly”  in Phelan and Rabonowitz Eds. A Companion to Narrative Theory. Blackwell Publishing. Pp 499-512.     

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (Matthew Akers, 2012)

Spaces Between (Roohi Dixit & Ziba Bhagwagar, 2016)

 

Unit-5
Teaching Hours:10
Interactive/Modular Narratives
 

 

This unit looks at fluid, shifting, and re-organising narratives and narrative structures such as in in the context of archives, new media and video games. It carries forward the question of stability, permanence and knowledge production encountered in the previous unit.

Readings:

J. Derrida (1996) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Trans. Eric Prenowitz.

Indiancine.ma

Google cultural institute

L. Manovich (2002) The Language of New Media + Manovich’s blog

Introduction from A. Gallaway (2006) Gaming : Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Univ of Minnesotta Press.

Selected chapters from Lowood & Nitsche (Ed.) The Machinima Reader. MIT Press.

 

 

 

 

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

M. Bal (1997) Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd Ed. University of Toronto Press.

 

M. Fludernik (2009) An Introduction to Narratology. Routledge.

 

I. Watt (2015[1957]) The Rise of the Novel. London: Penguin.

 

M. Kundera: The Art of the Novel

 

M. Mukherjee (1985) Realism and Reality: the Novel and Society in India. Delhi: OUP


Utpal Kumar Banerjee (2008) “The Subtle Art of Story-telling,” Indian Literature, 52 (4): 147-152

 

R. Sawhney (2018) “Shadowing the Image Archive: Inside Nalini Malani’s Shadow Plays,” MIRAJ 7(2): 324-34.

 

G. M. Sheikh (1995) “Viewer’s View: Looking at Pictures” in Niranjana et al. eds. Interrogating Modernity, pp. 143-154.

 

R. Srivatsan (1993) “Imaging Truth and Desire: Photography and the Visual Field in India” in Niranjana et. al. eds. Interrogating Modernity. Pp 155-198.

 

D. Bordwell ( 2007) “Three Dimensions of Film Narrative” in Poetics of Cinema.

 

http://www.davidbordwell.net/books/poetics.php

 

 P. Phelan (2005) “Shards of a History of Performance Art: Pollock and Namuth, Through a Glass, Darkly”  in Phelan and Rabonowitz Eds. A Companion to Narrative Theory. Blackwell Publishing. Pp 499-512.     

 

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (Matthew Akers, 2012)

 

Spaces Between (Roohi Dixit & Ziba Bhagwagar, 2016)                                                                                   

 

J. Derrida (1996) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Trans. Eric Prenowitz.

 

Indiancine.ma

 

Google cultural institute

 

L. Manovich (2002) The Language of New Media + Manovich’s blog

 

Introduction from A. Gallaway (2006) Gaming : Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Univ of Minnesotta Press.

 

Selected chapters from Lowood & Nitsche (Ed.) The Machinima Reader. MIT Press.

 

 

 

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Abbot, H. Porter (2002) The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. CUP.

Cobley, Paul (2001) Narrative. Routledge.

Freeman, M. (1998) 'Mythical time , historical time, and the narrative fabric of the Self’ Narrative Inquiry 8 (1): 27-50.

Genette, G. (1982) Narrative discourse Basil Blackwell.

Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual Poachers: Television and Participatory Culture, Routledge,.

Lothe ,J. (2000) Narrative in fiction and film : An Introduction Oxford University Press.

Murray. (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in  Cyberspace,MIT Press.

Ong,W.J (1982) Orality and Literacy : The Technologies of the word, Methuen.

Ricoeur, P.  (1981) 'Narrative time' in W.J.T.Mitchell (ed.) On Narrative University of Chicago Press.

Snyder, I. (1998) 'Beyond the hype: reassessing hypertext' in Page to Screen: Taking Literacy in the electronic era, Routledge.

 

Evaluation Pattern

70% Internal Assessment: CIA I  (20 marks) + CIA II (20 marks) + MSE (50 marks)

* This is a submission paper - final submission 30%

BMEC133 - RESEARCH & WRITING (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Course Description

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the range of qualitative research methods associated with English and Cultural studies. As such, the course covers a spectrum of methodological tools, including discourse analysis, narrative inquiry, interviewing, ethnography, participant observation and oral history.

 

Objectives: On the completion of course, students will be able to:

·       Develop the ability for critical reading, annotation and analysis of theoretical texts

·       Articulate a feasible research inquiry including a set of central research questions

·       Map out the scholarly field(s) of relevance through a review of literature

·       Develop suitable methodological strategies specific to the project

·       Execute the research project, in a reflective manner, which makes the research process visible

·       Write a well-structured research paper following due academic conventions of citing etc.

·       Develop the ability to question, critique and give feedback to peers’ research projects.

 

 

Course Outcome

 

·      Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the principles and the thinking behind the different research paradigms relevant to English and Cultural Studies

·      Demonstrate the ability to describe and discuss different methods and their areas of application, their strengths and weaknesses and their epistemological roots

·      Demonstrate the ability to formulate research questions, design a scientific study and choose relevant methods based on  specific research questions

·      Demonstrate the ability to reflect over methodological aspects that are related to different research paradigms, and to able see the relationship between the theoretical basis and the choice of research method

·      Demonstrate the ability to critically reflect over one’s own role and position as a researcher

·      Demonstrate the ability to execute a research project, including writing a well-structured paper following due academic conventions.

 

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:20
Introduction: Research Methods
 

 

Introduction: Research Methods                                                 (20 hrs)

·      Research Methods in Literary Studies

·      Research Methods in Cultural Studies

 

Prescribed Texts: Gabrielle Griffith. Research Methods in English Studies. Edinburgh UP, 2005.

                              Michael Pickering. Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh UP, 2008.

 

 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:10
Beginning Research
 

 

Unit II: Beginning Research                                                                    

·      Research Design; Research papers/articles; Dissertation and Thesis; Elements of a Research Paper; Primary and Secondary Sources; How to Use the Library and Online sources

 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:10
ABstracts, Literature Reviews and Bibliographies
 

 

·      How to write Abstracts ; Literature Review; Bibliographies: Annotated, Working and others ; How to prepare Works Cited and Bibliographies and in-text citations

 

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:20
Writing the Paper
 

 

·      Research Topic

·      Research Questions and Objectives

·      Research Problem /Thesis Statements / Hypothesis

·      Constructing Arguments

·      Using Validations

·      Using and engaging with theories/frameworks/methodologies

·      Constructing the Proposal / Introduction

·      Constructing the Chapters or Anlayses

·      Constructing Conclusions

·      Revising your paper

 

Prescribed Resource for Unit III and IV: Purdue OWL

 

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

Gabrielle Griffith. Research Methods in English Studies. Edinburgh UP, 2005.

Michael Pickering. Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh UP, 2008.

Wayne C. Booth, Joseph M. Williams, and Gregory G. Colombedited The Craft of Research, 3rd Edition. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

 

 

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Bailey, Stephen. Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students. Routledge, 2006.

Bain, Carl. E, Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 6th ed. W.W. Norton Company,  1995.

Griffith, Kelley. Writing Essays about Literature: A Guide and Style Sheet. 6th ed. Harcourt College Publishers,  2002.

Harvey, Michael. The Nuts & Bolts of College Writing. Hackett Publishing, 2003.

Montgomery, Martin, et al. Ways of Reading: Advanced Reading Skills for Students of English Literature. Routledge,  2007.

Pirie, David B. How to Write Critical Essays: A Guide for Students of Literature. Routledge,  1985.

Whitla, William. The English Handbook: A Guide to Literary Studies. Blackwell,  2010.

Woolf, Judith. Writing about Literature. Routledge,  2005.

 

Evaluation Pattern

70% internal assessment: CIA I (20 marks) + CIA II (20 marks) + MSE submission (50 marks)

30% End semester submission paper

BMEC141A - MEMORY, HISTORY, NARRATIVES (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

This course is to introduce students to methodologies that are required for understanding identity and history as a multiple, layered, and often a contested set of representations. The course is built as an in-depth series of case studies, with the aim of bringing together three distinct areas of analytical questions that are implied by its title’s key terms – ‘history’, ‘memory’ and ‘identity’. Questions like – what are main approaches to social and cultural memory? What, and whose history is being remembered and narrated? And in this quagmire, how should identity be understood? – would be the prime focus of the course

This course will give a thorough grounding in the classical works on memory from Durkheimean, psychoanalytical and Marxist perspectives, including Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora, and contrasting it with the studies that draw on post- structuralist and cognitive approaches, as well as theories of affect and subjectivity. Then it will proceed to asking what can be learned about societies from ways in which they are concerned with history. What are some of the types of historical consciousness and cultural notions of history, of lack thereof? How one can productively compare imperial and universalist notions of history as progress with ideas about historical and cultural uniqueness and exceptionalism, including nationalism, as well as with conceptualizations of history as justice, as trauma, and as objects of consumption. What are practices of production, exchange and consumption of historical narratives in education, tourism and politics? And finally, where does Identity – one of the key categories in historical and social analysis, fit in? One of the goals of the course is to ask what identity is, and what approaches to identity are useful for understanding historical memory.

Course Objectives:

  • The course’s focal point would be emphasizing discourses on communities, uniqueness and exceptionality, including the myths of origin and of cultural exclusivity, narratives of national history and even pantheons of national heroes, in the creation of memory and identity.

  • It will then move on to empire and post-coloniality, (post)socialism and (neo)liberalism as equally distinct forms of historical memory organization, with their own repertoires of referential imagery and understandings of boundaries.

  • It will also explore the issues of memory of war, including civil war and ethnic conflict. Archive, film, body and material objects, including buildings, are

15

MA in English and Cultural Studies

Course Code

Course Title

No. of Hours

Marks

Credits

BMEC141A

Memory, History, Narratives

60

100

4

approached as culturally-specific memory devices and contested sites for historical

memory, in turn leading to the construction of identity.

  • Genres of historical narratives, including historiography, ethnology and

    anthropology, and museum will also be discussed as theatres of memory-making

    and contestations of identity.

  • Students will further identify social and cultural factors that help shape our

    identities by analyzing firsthand reflections and creating their own personal

    identity charts.

  • To help the students ask and evaluate questions like – What factors shape our

    identities? What dilemmas arise when others view us differently than we view

    ourselves? How do our identities influence our choices?

  • To make students understand that identity is not only valuable for their own social,

    moral, and intellectual development, it also serves as a foundation for examining the choices made by individuals and groups in the past as well as in the present.

Course Outcome

 

  1. Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

    • Critically engage with representations of the past in the present and use the

      evidence in interrogating historical accounts and memory.

    • Evaluate how issues of identity and memory factor into our historical

      understandings and how this can condition present day policies and decision-

      making.

    • Critically reflect and engage with the interface between the past and the present,

      fostering a healthy appreciation for history and its imprint on our present world.

    • Analyze how historical memory and identity are shaped by states, organizations,

      and individuals.

    • Trace the evolution and interaction between history, memory and politics when

      following the news and in examining historical cases.

    • Develop the ability to generate concepts and theoretical models, and to test new

      methods and tools for professional and research-based activities.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:12
Shape of Memory: A Place in History
 

 

  1. Performance of the Past: Theories of History, Memory and Identity, and Cultural Histories

  2. b)  Framing and Reframing Identity: Mapping the Terrain of Memory – Individual to Collective

  3. c)  Unstuck in Time: The Sudden Presence of the Past – The Politics of Submersion

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:16
Legacies and Memory: the Many After-Lives
 

 

  1. The Contested Place of Memory: The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, Sabarmati Ashram, Lincoln Memorial, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Mausoleum.

  2. b)  TheUbiquitousPast-PresentandLost:PoliticsofDisplaywithinandwithout; Marine Corps War Memorial, Jewish Museum in Berlin, Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Taj Mahal.

  3. c)  Making History: Narratives and Counter-narratives; Opium Wars, The Ayodhya Debate and the Ram Janmabhoomi Issue, Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde.

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:16
Memory and Identity: Haunted by History
 

 

  1. Tracing the Ghost and the Geographies of Violence: The Kashmir Issue, Israeli- Palestinian Conflict, China-Japan rivalry.

  2. b)  Irrevocable Futures: The Dynamics of Conflict – the Aryan Debate, Hindutva Ideology and Neo-Nazis.

  3. c)  Suppressing the Text: State Secrets and Declassification – Wikileaks and the Netaji Files.

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:16
The Performative Indentity: Indelible Memories
 

 

  1. Memory and Incongruous Images: Political Lives of Dead Bodies; Burials, Mass Graves, Exhumations, Bodies of Great People.

  2. b)  Identity and the Politics of Remembrance: Engendered Memories; Culinary Discourses and Politics of Food; Folktales and Folklore

  3. c)  The Economy of Memory: Consumption of/and Heritage, Heritage Tourism, Cultural Property and Identity

  4. d)  Ethics and Limits of Representation: Can Culture Belong to any One Group? Can Culture be Copyrighted?

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

  • Baum,Bruce.2006.TheRiseandFalloftheCaucasianRace:APoliticalHistoryofRacial Identity, New York: New York University Press.

  • McGrattan,Cillian.2012.Memory,PoliticsandIdentity:HauntedbyHistory,London: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Sen, Amartya. 2005. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, New Delhi: Penguin Books Ltd.

  • Thapar, Romila. 2000. History and Beyond, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

  • Thapar, Romila. 2013. The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India,

    New Delhi: Permanent Black.

  • Thapar, Romila. 2019. Time as a Metaphor of History: Early India, The Krishna

    Bharadwaj Memorial Lecture. New Delhi: Oxford.

  • Tilmans, Karin, Frank van Vree, Jay Winter (eds). 2010. Performing the Past:

    Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam

    University Press.

  • Venner, Dominique. 2015. The Shock of History: Religion, Memory, Identity, Arktos

    Media Ltd.

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

  • Alam, Muzaffar. 2014. The Languages of Political Islam in India c. 1200-1800. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.

  • Ballinger, Pamela. 2002. History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  • Banerjee, Sumanta, 2003. Ayodhya: A Future Bound by the Past, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 38, No. 27, pp. 2795-2796.

  • Chassot, Joanne. 2018. Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-Visioning History, Memory, and Identity, Re-Mapping the Transnational – A Dartmouth Series in American Studies Dartmouth: Dartmouth College Press.

  • Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

  • Chatterjee, Partha. 2012. The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

  • Counihan, Carole, and Steven L. Kaplan. 1998. Food and Gender: Identity and Power, Food and Nutrition in History and Culture Series, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

  • Dorn, Sherman, Barbara J. Shircliffe, Deirdre Cobb-Roberts (eds). 2006. Schools as Imagined Communities: The Creation of Identity, Meaning, and Conflict in U.S. History, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Finney, Patrick. 2010. Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory, New York: Routledge.

    • Friedman, Kajsa Ekholm. 1994. Consumption and Identity, Studies in Anthropology & History Series, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

    • Genova, Ann, and Toyin Falola. 2006. Yoruba Identity and Power Politics, Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

    • Kumar, Ravinder 1989. The Past and the Present: An Indian Dialogue, Daedalus, Vol. 118, No.4, pp. 27-49.

    • Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel. 2004. War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation, Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare (English Edition), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Matten, Marc Andre. 2011. Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity, Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography, Leiden and Boston: BRILL.

    • Ramanujan, A K. Folktales from India. Penguin, 1994.

    • Shrimali, K.M. 1998. A Future for the Past? Social Scientist, Vol. 26, No. 9, pp. 26- 51.

    • Sikes, Alan. 2007. Representation and Identity from Versailles to the Present: The Performing Subject, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History Series, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    • Stevens, Maurice E. 2003. Troubling Beginnings: Trans(per)forming African American History and Identity, Studies in African American History and Culture Series. London: Routledge.

    • Thapar, Romila, Harbans Mukhia, Bipan Chandra. 1969. Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, New Delhi: People's Publishing House.

    • Thapar, Romila. 1979. Dissent in the Early Indian Tradition, Volume 7 of M.N. Roy memorial lecture, New Delhi: Indian Renaissance Institute.

    • Tharu, Susie. Ed. Subject to Change. Sahitya Akademi, 1994.

    • Wangler, Alexandra. 2012. Rethinking History, Reframing Identity: Memory,

      Generations, and the Dynamics of National Identity in Poland, Bremen: Springer.

    • Webster, Wendy. 1998. Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945-

      1964, Women's History Series, London: University College London Press.

    • White, Geoffrey M., 1991. Identity through History: Living Stories in a Solomon Islands Society, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology Series,

      Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Zachmann, Urs Matthias. 2009. China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy

      and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1895-1904, Routledge Leiden Series in Modern East Asian Politics and History, London and New York: Routledge. 

  •  

Evaluation Pattern

 

CIA I – 20 marks MSE – 50 marks CIA II – 20 marks ESE - 50 marks

BMEC141B - REVISITING MYTHOLOGIES (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

 

Course Description

 

As mythologies continue to shape and define the world around, it is imperative to discern what makes myths meaningful expressions across cultures. The course attempts to introduce students to the historical as well as the contemporary approaches to understanding mythologies, with particular focus on the oeuvre of Indian myths. What makes myths windows to various cultures? What gives Indian mythology its peculiar character? How have contemporary attempts at retelling myths transformed the Indian cultural tapestry? The course will investigate some of these areas in order to understand what has contributed to the preservation and dissemination of myths across Indian history. The course will also look at the role of performative art forms in retelling and revisioning of Indian myths. The course, therefore, is aimed at encouraging an interdisciplinary scholarship.

 

 

Course Objectives

 

This course aims to help students:

·      Understand the cultural and historical significance of myths

·      Identify universal mythic patterns

·      Develop a cross-cultural perspective on myths

·      Understand the fundamentals of Mnemoculture

·      Recognise the role of performative art within mythology

 

 

 

Course Outcome

Students will be able to:

  • Define the cultural and historical significance of myths
  • Identify universal mythic patterns and describe them

  • Present an informed perspective on the contemporary revisioning of Indian myths

  • Explain the politics of ‘myth’ creation through oral presentations and writing

  • Anlayse the role and politics of performative art and mythology

  • Develop interpretative frameworks to engage with myths in modern society

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:20
Myths, Symbols, and Meaning-Making
 

 

The unit seeks to familiarise students with the anthropology of myths and establish the connect between myths, rituals, symbols. The attempt is to elucidate the cross-cultural overlaps that myths bring to the fore.

 

Compulsory Reading

 

Sir James George Frazer: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion

John Fiske: Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology

Mircea Eliade: Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return

Amar Chitra Katha

Thomas Bulfinch: Bulfinch’s Mythology

Hesiod:“Theogony”

Aesops Fables

Thomas Malory: Le Morte d’Arthur

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:20
Mythical Imagination & Reinterpretation
 

 

The focus of this unit is on contemporary Indian mythical narratives. The texts under this unit will help locate the manner in which myths have been reinterpreted and retold by contemporary authors to offer alternate, if not multiple readings of such narratives. The unit will also bring to the fore the difference between ‘myth’ and ‘history.’By exclusively focusing on the treatment of myths in India, the unit is going to delve into the process of decoding myths and the ways in which popular imagination helps to reinterpret myths and keep them alive.

 

 Compulsory Reading

 

Amish Tripathi – Shiva Trilogy

Chithra Devakaruni: Palace of Illusions

Devdutt Patnaik: Shikhandi

Kavita Kané: Menaka’s Choice

Shivaji Sawant: Mrityunjaya- The Death Conquerer

Carole, Satyamurti. Mahabharata - a Modern Retelling.

Ajay K. Rao. Re-Figuring the Rāmāyaṇa as Theology: A History of Reception in Premodern India.

 

 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:10
Mnemoculture and Cultural Inheritance
 

 

This unit will introduce students to the concept of ‘mnemocultures’ or the cultures of memory and how through the enactment or performance of memories, they help in the transmission of mythologies, traditions, and cultural beliefs.

 

Compulsory Reading

 

D. Venkat Rao: Cultures of Memory in South Asia: Orality, Literacy and the Problem of Inheritance

Donald H. Mills: The Hero and the Sea: Patterns of Chaos in Ancient Myth

 

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:10
Myths and Performativity
 

 

 

 

 

 

This unit will focus on the role of performative art forms in the dissemination of myths. The focus will also be on the manner in which myths pervade contemporary living through popular cultural mediums or digital platforms.

 

 

 

Possible Art Forms to be considered include:

 

Kavad

 

Thiruvathira

 

Mata Ni Pachedi

 

Koodiyattam

 

Poorakali

 

Villu Paatu

 

Sarpam Thullal

 

Chaau Dance

 

Yakshagana

 

Gondha

 

Puppetry shows

 

Ramleela Performances

 

 

 

 

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

Sir James George Frazer: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion

John Fiske: Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology

Mircea Eliade: Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return

Amar Chitra Katha

Thomas Bulfinch: Bulfinch’s Mythology

Hesiod:“Theogony”

Aesops Fables

Thomas Malory: Le Morte d’Arthur

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

 

Amish Tripathi – Shiva Trilogy

Chithra Devakaruni: Palace of Illusions

Devdutt Patnaik: Shikhandi

Kavita Kané: Menaka’s Choice

Shivaji Sawant: Mrityunjaya- The Death Conquerer

Carole, Satyamurti. Mahabharata - a Modern Retelling.

Ajay K. Rao. Re-Figuring the Rāmāyaṇa as Theology: A History of Reception in Premodern India.

 

D. Venkat Rao: Cultures of Memory in South Asia: Orality, Literacy and the Problem of Inheritance

Donald H. Mills: The Hero and the Sea: Patterns of Chaos in Ancient Myth

 

 

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

 

Apollonius, and William H. Race. Argonautica. Harvard University Press, 2009.

 

Bakhtin, Michail Michajlovič. Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press, 2009.

 

Brodbeck, Simon, and Brian Black. Gender and Narrative in the Mahābhārata. Routledge, 2007.

 

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane the Nature of Religion. Harcourt Brace, 1959.

 

Ellwood, Robert S. The Politics of Myth: a Study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell. State University of New York Press, 1999.

 

Grimal, Pierre, et al. A Concise Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Basil Blackwell, 1994.

 

Hiltebeitel, Alf. Rethinking the Mahābhārata: a Reader's Guide to the Education of the Dharma King. Oxford University Press, 2002.

 

Jensen, Jeppe Sinding. Myths and Mythologies A Reader. Taylor and Francis, 2014.

 

Morford, Mark P. O., et al. Classical Mythology. Oxford University Press, 2019.

 

Ramanujan, A. K. “Telling Tales.” Daedalus118:04. 1989. 

 

Ramen, Fred. Indian Mythology. Rosen Central, 2008.

 

Roland, Barthes. Mythologies. Points, 2014.

 

Soni, V & Thapar, R. (2017). Mythology, Science and Society. The Hindu. Retrieved from:

 

 https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/mythology-science-and-society/article6571525.ece

 

Wilford, J.N.(2000). Greek Myths: Not Necessarily Mythical. The New York Times. Retrieved from : https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/04/science/greek-myths-not-necessarily-mythical.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evaluation Pattern

 

 

 

CIA - Evaluation Pattern

Individual Assignment

Group Assessment

Mid Semester

20

20

25

Mid Semester Examination

Section A

Section B

Section C

Total

2X10=20

1X15=15

1X15=15

50

End Semester Examination

Section A

Section B

Section C

Total

 

BMEC141C - LANGUAGE AND PERFORMATIVITY (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

This course engages students with performativity and performance-based texts to examine notions of how language constructs ontological categories. Focusing on the aesthetic and the political dimensions of performance, it introduces learners to theoretical frameworks in terms of culture as performance and enables them to locate their readings and viewings of performance-based texts within the broader context of language in cultural studies.

Objectives

The objective of this paper is to attempt to help students

  • Read and understand works of performance in terms of verbal as well as nonverbal communication

  • Engage with the notion of culture as performance

  • Examine the broader contexts within which performance and performativity

    are driving forces of human experiences 

Course Outcome

 

  1. The course will enable students acquaint themselves with key dramatic texts from different sub-genres. It will lay the platform for further research for students interested in theatre.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
Language, Performance and Cultural Studies
 

 

  1. This unit examines key areas in which language is an intrinsic aspect of cultural performativity .

    1. Erika Fichte, “Culture and Performance”

    2. Fortier, Chapter on Theatre and Semiotics

    Pertinent examples from literary, visual, and cultural texts to be selected by the course facilitator.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:15
Language and Experimentation
 

 

  1. Rosaldo, Michelle. The Things We Do with Words: Ilongot Speech Acts and Speech Act Theory in Philosophy. Language in Society 11(2):203-237.

  2. Martin Esslin, “The Theatre of the Absurd”

  3. Tambiah, Stanley. Form and Meaning of Magical Acts.” In Culture, Thought,

    and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective. Pp. 60-86

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:15
Language, Race and Gender
 

 

  1. Fortier, Chapters on Gender, Race, and Post-structuralism

  2. Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English

    Language

  3. Klausen, Jytte. 2009. The Cartoons that Shook the World. Publisher’s Statement

    (p. vi), Introduction (pp. 1-12), Chronology (pp. 185- 199), “Muslim

    Iconoclasm and Christian Blasphemy” (pp. 131-146)

  4. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech.

  5. Kiesling, Scott. 2002. Playing the Straight Man: Displaying and Maintaining

    Male Heterosexuality in Discourse. In Language and Sexuality.

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:15
South Asian Studies
 

 

  1. Mahesh Dattani, Dance Like a Man

  2. Kamila Shamsie, The Popcorn Essayists

  3. Bharath Divakar, “Expecto Patronum” and other poems

  4. Jamyang Norbu, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

Artaud, Antonin. “The Theater of Cruelty.” Selected Writings: Antonin Artaud. Ed.

Susan Sontag. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1976. 242-251.
Balme, Christopher B.
Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies. Cambridge

University Press, 2010.
Bloom, Harold.
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books, 1998. Brandt, George W. Modern Theories of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and

Theatre 1850-1990. Oxford University Press, 1998. Chambers, Colin. The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century

Theatre. Continuum, 2002.
Else, Gerard. (Trans.)
Aristotle: The Poetics. University of Michigan, 1967.
Esslin, Martin. “The Theatre of the Absurd.”
The Tulane Drama Review 4.4 (1960): 3-

15.
Fortier, Mark.
Theory/Theatre: An Introduction. Routledge, 1997.
Kott, Jan.
Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Trans. Boleslaw Taborski. Methuen, 1964. Montell, Amanda. Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Investigating Language Attitudes: Social Meanings of Dialect, Ethnicity and Performance by Garrett, Coupland, and Williams.
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.”
Bigger, Stephen. “Victor Turner, Liminality, and Cultural Performance.”

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Artaud, Antonin. “The Theater of Cruelty.” Selected Writings: Antonin Artaud. Ed.

Susan Sontag. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1976. 242-251.
Balme, Christopher B. 
Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies. Cambridge

University Press, 2010.
Bloom, Harold. 
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books, 1998. Brandt, George W. Modern Theories of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and

Theatre 1850-1990. Oxford University Press, 1998. Chambers, Colin. The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century

Theatre. Continuum, 2002.
Else, Gerard. (Trans.) 
AristotleThe Poetics. University of Michigan, 1967.
Esslin, Martin. “The Theatre of the Absurd.” 
The Tulane Drama Review 4.4 (1960): 3-

15.
Fortier, Mark. 
Theory/Theatre: An Introduction. Routledge, 1997.
Kott, Jan. 
Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Trans. Boleslaw Taborski. Methuen, 1964. Montell, Amanda. Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Investigating Language Attitudes: Social Meanings of Dialect, Ethnicity and Performance by Garrett, Coupland, and Williams.
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.”
Bigger, Stephen. “Victor Turner, Liminality, and Cultural Performance.”

Evaluation Pattern

 

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through CIA 1, CIA 2 (Mid-Semester submission), and CIA 3. The end semester submission will be for 30%.

CIAs: Tasks based on research, application, performance, and audio-visual components.
MSE/ESE: Submission OR performance for 50 marks.

MA in English and Cultural Studies

BMEC141D - CURRICULUM, PEDAGOGY, ASSESSMENT (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Course Description

This course intends to introduce the students to multiple curriculum frameworks, associated range of pedagogies involved in the process of teaching and learning, and, several assessment tools pertaining to teaching English in particular and Humanities in general. The course is designed in such a way that it would not only promote an in-depth understanding of the components that leads to successful pedagogic practices but will also enable the learners to foster an understanding of how pedagogic spaces are constructed. This course is a mixture of theoretical and practical approaches for it incorporates not only theoretical understanding of multiple curriculum frameworks and pedagogic practices but also aims at providing hands-on training to the learners for developing content for teaching, framing course plans, and identifying teaching and learning strategies that can be applied to specific classroom contexts.

Course Objectives: The course has been designed with the following objectives:

  1. To make the learners aware of multiple curriculum frameworks, pedagogic practices, and, assessment techniques.
  2. To equip the learners with practical knowledge of various teaching methods.
  3. To develop an understanding of various socio-political factors the affect the construction of curriculum.
  4. To provide the learners with knowledge in the domain of teaching and curriculum development which will lead towards content creation as well as better teaching approaches.
  5. The broader objective of this course is to foster innovation, professionalism, collegiality, and ethical and equitable practice in all students.

 

Course Outcome

  • Describe, discuss, and plan pedagogical tools (Application Skills).

  • Analyse and implement various teaching methods (Critical Analytic Skills).

  • Describe, discuss, and plan various skill and discipline specific courses (Planning and Analytic Skills)

  • Analyse and implement various assessment techniques (Practical and Implementation Skills )

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
Understanding Education: Issues and Concerns
 

 

This unit critically examines the main issues and concerns in the field of education in general and English education in particular in India. Besides trying to understand the gaps and challenges in the field of higher education in India, this unit also elaborately deals with innovations in the field of education which can mitigate the gaps thereby paving way for more inclusive teaching practices.

  1. The Structure of Indian Education: Both longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the structure of Indian Education should be conducted in order to promote a better understanding of the same.
  2. The Indian Education Policy: Special focus to be given on the language policy in Education.
  3. The Innovations in the field of Education: ICT, AV aids, Google Classrooms, Gamification etc. to be discussed in detail.
  4. Reflective and Inclusive Teaching Practices: The concepts of learner-centered pedagogy, heutagogy, mixed-ability learning groups etc. should be discussed.

 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:12
Language, Learning and Teaching
 

 

This unit focuses on understanding the prominent theories in the field of language education and tries to situate the popular methods of language teaching through the ages across the various paradigms.

  1. The Grammar Translation Method
  2. Behaviorism and Audio-visual Teaching Method
  3. Input Hypothesis and the Natural Method
  4. Cognitivism and Communicative Teaching Method
  5. Skill Based Instruction
  6. The Post Method Approach

 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:8
Curriculum Development and Course Design
 

 

The main objective of this unit is to develop a clear understanding of the various theories of curriculum and analyse the technical aspects involved in construction of curriculum. This unit will not only lead to a theoretical understanding of various aspects of curriculum but application of these theories to generate content for teaching.

  1. Understanding curriculum : Various Curriculum Theories can be discussed to understand the process of development of curriculum. The politics behind construction of curriculum can be also looked at.
  2. Writing Course Plans : The main emphasis is not only to learn how to write a course plan but how to incorporate knowledge, skills, and attitudes in the course outcomes. Bloom’s Taxonomy should be discussed in great detail in this context.
  3. Outcome Based Approach: The focus of this approach will be to discuss how to align learning outcomes, teaching Strategies, and, assessment tasks.

 

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:10
Understanding Assesment and Testing: Issues and Practices
 

 

This unit will introduce the learners to various methods of assessment and evaluation and discuss the practical applicability of these methods. This unit will discuss how certain assessment methods can be applied to test the learning outcomes of the course.

  1. Summative and Formative assessment methods: Brief introduction to be provided.
  2. Summative assessment: Key issues of validity, reliability, bias, and fairness to be discussed in detail.
  3. Formative assessment: Key issues of learning intentions, feedback, peer and self-assessment to be discussed in detail.
  4. Accountability, assessment policy, international assessment and vocational assessment to be discussed in detail.

 

Unit-5
Teaching Hours:15
Development of Teaching Modules
 

 

The main objective of this unit is to apply the theoretical knowledge gained over the previous units and develop skill-specific (e) content for target learners. The learners will actively seek the help of their respective mentors to identify the area in which content has to be developed and co-create the teaching modules.

  1. Register Analysis, Error Analysis, Need Analysis: Basic overview of these fields are to be developed in order to create a learner centric module.
  2. Learning Styles oriented teaching modules: Comprehensive understanding of learning styles to develop to construct effective teaching modules catering to all types of learners.
  1. Content Creation: Hands-on exercises to develop the respective teaching modules to be conducted. The creation of the modules will follow the following steps:

a.     Analyzing important situational Factors

b.    Identification of Learning Outcomes

c.     Formulating Feedback and Assessment

d.    Selecting Teaching and Learning Activities

e.     Selecting effective teaching and learning strategies

f.      Developing an effective grading system

Developing effective rubrics for grading

 

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

 

https://www.ugc.ac.in/oldpdf/xiplanpdf/EContentxiplan.pdf (Ugc document of e-content creation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug&t=387s (Lecture by Stephen Krashen)

 

 

 

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Bates, T. Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning for a digital age. 2015. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

Bhatia, Vijay K. "Genre analysis, ESP and professional practice." English for specific purposes 27.2 (2008): 161-174.

Brookfield, Stephen D. Becoming a critically reflective teacher. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

Brown, James Dean. The elements of language curriculum: A systematic approach to program development. Heinle & Heinle Publishers, 20 Park Plaza, Boston, MA 02116., 1995.

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. "Globalization, methods, and practice in periphery classrooms."

Globalization and language teaching (2002): 134-150.

Chauhan, Chandra Pal Singh, and C. P. S. Chauhan. Modern Indian Education. Aligarh Muslim University, 2004.

Chomsky, Noam. "Verbal behavior." (1959): 26-58.

Corder, Stephen Pit. "Error analysis." The Edinburgh course in applied linguistics 3 (1974): 122-131.

Farrell, T., ed. International perspectives on English language teacher education: innovations from the field. Springer, 2015.

Fulcher, Glenn, and Fred Davidson. Language testing and assessment. London, England: Routledge, 2007.

Krashen, Stephen D. "Principles and practice in second language acquisition." (1982).

Prabhu, Neiman Stern. Second language pedagogy. Vol. 20. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Richards, Jack C., and Theodore S. Rodgers. Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge university press, 2014.

Richards, Jack C. Curriculum development in language teaching. Ernst Klett Sprachen, 2001.

Slattery, Patrick. Curriculum development in the postmodern era: Teaching and learning in an age of accountability. Routledge, 2012.

 

Evaluation Pattern

70% Internal Assessment: CIA I (20 marks) + CIA II (20 marks) + MSE (50 mrks)

30% End Semester Exam (50 marks)

BMEC231 - GENDER AND INTERSECTIONALITY (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Our lived experiences are shaped by the ways in which varying systems of privileges and oppressions work.  Every individual acts in the world based on the influences of identities that they adopt or are imposed by the social systems. Each identity – whether it’s, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, caste - exists along a hierarchy that determines how visible and valued that person’s experiences are in their particular social context. These identities and hierarchies intersect with each other in ways that shape how a person is able to move and advance within their society.

 

Course Objectives: This course would enable students to:

  1. Interpret and apply the concept of intersectionality in relation to varied focal points of gender, caste, race and sexual, social and cultural politics.
  2. Understandthe politics behind the social construction of Identities.
  3. To understand constructions of femininity, masculinity, and non-binary notions of gender
  4.  Problematise singular understanding of gender and recognise the necessity to engage with gender at the intersection of other kinds of identities.
  5. Understand the mode in which power and privilege works in a societal structure. 
  6. Acquire a basic understanding of gender studies as a discipline.
  7. Understand the impact of technological innovation and virtuality on constructed identities.

 

Course Outcome

  • Demonstrate and understanding of how constructions of femininity, masculinity, and non-binary notions of gender function

  • Define and delineate key concepts of gender as explained by various theorists

  • Demonstrate how gender intersects with various other categories such as caste, class, race and so on, to construct different relations of power

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:20
Understanding Gender: Intersectional Approach
 

 

The unit engages in a discussion on the ideas of intersectionality and asserts that there is a necessity to understand gender in intersection with various other identities to understand the mode in which power structures and oppression works.

 

  1. Understanding complexities of identification “Subject of Sex/ Gender/ Desire” in Judith Butler’s Gender  Trouble
  2. Crenshaw Kimberle’s idea of Intersectionality in On Intersectionality.
  3. The Help (2011, Tate Taylor) to bring in the contradictory idea between black feminists and white feminists regarding the mode in which oppression works. (could refer to bell hook’s critique on Betty Feminine Mystique. )
  4. Exploring the ideas of freedom and its abstractness through Leila Aboulela’s: Minaret ( Novel) and bring it in the context of religion and religious practices.
  5. Mahashweta Devi’s “ Behind the Bodice” in the collection of short stories Breast Giver to discuss on class, caste, gender intersections.
  6. Gloria Anzaldua: Selections from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza to discuss on identities in the borders and bring in ideas on intersex. This could be done also by bringing in references from literatures where intersex and monstrosity is equated.

 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:20
Power and Construction of Normativity
 

 

The unit brings into discussion the various modes in which normativity is constructed by various institutions and in the process validates and normalizes few identities that exert power on identities that exist in margins.

 

  1. Priscilla Franks’ photo series on “The fragile Complexities of  Masculinitiy” to discuss on social construction of masculinity - Hyper masculinity - toxic Masculinity  and Gaptooth:Documentary Series on Masculinity

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/dreamy-photo-series-explores-the-fragile-complexity-of-masculinity_us_56e849e1e4b0860f99da8b45?ec_carp=2784016983102329861

(Discuss in relation to “History of Masculinity”by R. W Connell)

  1. Caste Study on Article 377 to bring in the notion of Unnatural Sex and the construction of normative
  2. Call me by Your Name ( 2017, Luca Guadagnino) and Discussion of Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick’s, “The Beast in the Closet: James and The Writing of Homosexual Panic” to understand the idea of Homosexual panic and construction of Homophobia.
  3. Foucault’s introduction to Herculine Barbin (Memoir) followed by the movie Boys Don’t Cry to discuss on assertion of  heteronormativity and Gender Roles. 
  4. Kobena Mercer’s “Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary” to discuss the construction of racial stereotypes.
  5. Case Study on Caste Based Murders in India to deliberate on Honour Killing or Caste Based Murders - (Discuss in relation to Kancha Ilaiah, Uma Chakravorty and Vasanth Kannabiran and Kalpana Kannabiran. )
  6. Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journal excerptsto discuss on ability/ disability and construction of normative idea of body

 

 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:10
The Politics of Privilege, Rights and Visibility
 

 

The unit considers how the various identities helps in asserting and occupying different power position  in the society that largely impacts the mode in which one asserts basic human rights, the access to legal rights and visibility of the lived experiences.

 

  1. Stephaine Newell “Postcolonial Masculinity and the Politics of Visibility” on Franz Fanon and visibility of oppression of black males.
  2. Discussion on the intersection of race, class and migrants and ethnicity in the context of beauty parlour as a women’s space in relation to the picture and article by  Sarah A. Harvard.  The discussion should be brought in connection to India and Migrant Labourers in Metropolitan city refer to Kikon, Dolly amd Milan Kang.

https://mic.com/articles/177195/these-three-pictures-make-a-powerful-statement-about-race-and-power-among-women#.DQDAhevhR.

  1. Bandit Queen (1994, Shekhar Kapur)  to discuss on the way intersection of dalit women’s position and the access to legal rights.
  2. A Revathi’s  Life in Trans Activism ( Discussion on activism and experiences)
  3. Case Study on Shabarimalaand the notion of purity and women
  4. Movie on refugees Human Flow

 

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:10
Virtual Bodies and Post-Genderism
 

 

The unit brings into discussion the impact of technological innovations on constructed identities, gender role in the world. It also deals with the mode in which these identities in the human world are negotiated in the virtual world.

  1. Excerpts from Cyborg Manifesto
  2. Claudia Castanida’s “Robotic Skin: The future of Touch?”in Thinking Through the  Skin 
  3. Virtual Identities and Gender - discussion on Avatar, Warcraft and Virtual identities.  Refer to (http://feminartsy.com/virtual-reality-gender-identity-in-video-games)
  4. Excerpts from Hayles, Katherine “How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.”
  5. Resident Evil 2012, Paul W. S. Anderson  / Orphan Black TV Series to discuss on the ideas on identities in the world of technological creation of powerful, higher order human clones.

 

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

  1. Judith Butler’s Gender  Trouble
  2. Crenshaw Kimberle’s  On Intersectionality.
  3. The Help (2011, Tate Taylor)
  4.  Leila Aboulela’s: Minaret
  5. Mahashweta Devi’s “ Behind the Bodice” in the collection of short stories Breast Giver
  6. Gloria Anzaldua: Selections from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Ahmed, Leila. "Women and Gender in Islam Historical Roots of a Modern Debate." London : Yale University Press ,1992.

Crenshaw, Kimberle.“Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, Identity politics, and violence against women of colour”. Stanford Law Review. Vol 43, No 6. 1991. JSTOR.

Christina, Barbara. “Race for Theory” Feminist Studies. Vol. 14 No. 1 ,Feminist Studies Inc. Spring 1998, P 67-79.

Friedman,Susan Stanford.“Locational Feminism: Gender, Cultural Geographies and Geopolitical Literacy”. Mapping, Feminism and Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Gayathri Spivak “Three women’s Text and A critique of Imperialism” Race, Writing And Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.  JSTOR .

Halberstam, Judith and David L Hang. “What is Queer About Queer Studies Now”. Social Text Vol 23 .No 83-4.  California : Duke University Press. 2005.

Hayles, Katherine.  How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1999.

Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. California: Duke University Press, 2011.

Kannabiran, Vasanth and Kalpana Kannabiran.“Caste and gender: Understanding dynamics of power and violence. ” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 26, No 37, 1991.

Kikon, D Waynding. “Indigenous Migrants in the Service Sector of Metropolitan India, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies”, 2017  P. 1 - 16. 

Kang, Milan . “Manicuring Race, Gender and Class: Service Intersection in New York City Korean Owned Nail Salons” Race, Gender and Class Journal. Vol 4 , No 3, 1996, JSTOR.143 to 154.

Kumar, Anant  “ Menstruation, Purity and Right to Worship” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 41, No 9, 2016.

Lorde, Audre. Age, “Race and Sex : Women Redefining Difference” Sister Outsiders: Essays and Speech. Freedom CA: Crossing Press, 1984, 114-123.

Paul, Chul-ho Paik & Chung-Kon Shi “Playful gender swapping: user attitudes toward gender in MMORPG, avatar customisation, Digital Creativity,” 24:4, 2013 P,310-326. DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2013.767275.

R. W Connell. “History of Masculinity” . Masculinities. California: University of California Press, 1995.    

Uma Chakravorty “Conceptualizing Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State.” Caste, Class, Gender. SAGE Publishing.

 

Evaluation Pattern

 

Evaluation

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group assignments, and a 2hr written exam. The end semester exam will be for 30%.

 

 

 

BMEC232 - CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

This course introduces to students to a range of discourse on technology and culture within the humanities, with one unit focusing on these debates in the Indian context (20thand 21st centuries and another one focusing on the emergent field of digital humanities. It will also engage with the contemporary context, looking at issues such as biopolitics, surveillance, cyborgs, AI etc. Finally, students will be introduced to some creative work (literature and art) that generates possibilities for activism and an informed engagement with our techno-cultural landscapes and cyberscapes. Modes of instruction will include lectures, screenings, seminars, discussions, student-led presentations, invited guest lectures, visits to relevant institutions/exhibitions in Bangalore, readings, group-based project work etc.Course Objectives:

  1. Understanding the inter-relationship between culture and technology

  2. Providing a basic introduction to the field of which is developing within the

    Humanities.

  3. Providing a basic introduction to the academic discourse about Technology and

    Culture from a Humanities perspective – both globally and within India. This is especially crucial as the early genesis of Cultural Studies in India emerged from the search for indigenous science.

  4. Understanding the manner in which artists and writers have engaged with questions of technology and culture, beyond a representational context.

  5. Understanding how new developments in the field that are impacting the very ontology of human beings.

  6. Understanding the relationship between gendered bodies and technology. 

 

Course Outcome

 

1. Attain tools to understand the complex relationship between Technology and Culture.

 

  1. An understanding of the global discourse about culture and technology as well as its extensions in the Indian context.

  2. An understanding of the many ways in which an understanding of technology and culture are crucial to the Humanities, with a particular emphasis on technologies of governance and surveillance.

  3. A critical grasp of the ways in which technological culture poses philosophical questions about human ontology.

  4. An introduction to some of the creative ways in which artists and writers in India have engaged with technology, or with a cultural space shaped by technological modernity. 

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:10
Theoretical Frameworks
 

 

An introduction to some of the significant theoretical frameworks through which philosophers and social scientists have understood the intersections between technology and culture in a cultural context.

Walter Benjamin – “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Cyborg Manifesto – Donna Haraway (1985) –
Socialist Review
A Murphie & J. Potts (2002) ‘Introduction in Culture and Technology. Palgrave, pp 1-10. Murphie & Potts ‘Theoretical Frameworks’, pp. 11-38.
Martin Heidegger (1977)
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. Garland Publishing Inc.
Hard and Jamison (2005)
Hubris and Hybrids: A Cultural History of Technology and Science. London & NYC: Routledge.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:10
Techno-Beings
 

 

An exploration of some of the debates w.r.t how technological interfaces and interventions are transforming human bodies, relationships, senses and their possibilities.

Manjula Padmanabhan - Harvest
Asha Achuthan (n.d.) Re-wiring Bodies. CIS, Bangalore.

Chris Shilling (2005) “Technological Bodies” in The Body in Culture, Technology and Society. Sage, pp 173-197.
Paulo Verno

Anne Balsamo (1996) ‘The Role of the Body in Feminist Cultural Studies of Science and Technology’ in Technologies of the Gendered Body. Duke Univ Press, pp 157-64. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/In-the-future-humans-will-become- cyborgs/articleshow/433959.cms http://indiafuturesociety.org/category/general/cyborg/https://qz.com/1424235/these-real-life-cyborgs-are-changing-their-brains-by-enhancing-their- bodies/

Lazzarato, Maurizio (1996). "Immaterial labor". In Virno, Paolo; Hardt, Michael (eds.). Radical Thought in Italy : A Potential Politics. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 142–157. 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:10
Technologies of Surveillance
 

 

An examination of the new regime of surveillance brought about through recording technologies.
Chinmayai Arun (n.d) “Paperthin Safeguards and Mass Surveillance in India.” CIS, Bangalore -
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/paper-thin-safeguards.pdf “State of Cyber-Security and Surveillance in India: a Review of the Legal Landscape.” A Report by CIS, Bangalore.

The Radia Tapes - https://pad.ma/grid/title/list==zi:The_Radia_Tap%28e%29s This or That Particular Person (Subasri Krishnan, 2015, PSBT)

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:10
Technology and Modernity in India
 

 

This unit offers an introduction to selected debates on technological modernity in the Indian context, particularly with reference to nation-building and globalisation.

Ashis Nandy (1978-79) “The Traditions of Technology,” Alternatives 4 (3): 371-85. Selected chapters from Shiv Visvanathan (1997) A Carnival for Science: Essays in Science, Technology & Development. OUP.

Claude Alvares (1979) ‘Indian Technology and Culture: 1498-1757.’ Allied Publishers, pp 46- 74.

David Arnold (2013) ‘India’s Technological Imaginary’ in Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity. University of Chicago Press.

Robert Geraci, ‘Navigating Science and Technology in Bangalore’, in Temples of Modernity: Nationalism, Hinduism and Transhumanism in South Indian Science. Lexington Books, pp 13- 34.

Kavita Phillip “Postcolonial Technopolitics,” The Salon, vol 3.

Unit-5
Teaching Hours:10
Digital Humanities
 

 

Selected Chapters - A Companion to Digital Studies (2004) – Blackwell Publishing

Chapter 1: Introduction to Digital Humanities Chapter 8: Literary Studies
Chapter 26: Digital Media and the Analysis of Film

Selected Chapters: The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and ScholarsChapter 3: The Elements of Digital Humanities: Text and Document

Chapter 4: The Elements of Digital Humanities: Object, Artifact, Image, Sound, Space

Lisa Spiro – “This is why we fight; defining the values of digital humanities” – Debates in the Digital Humanities – 2012

Selected essays from - Doing Digital Humanities; Practice, Training, Research (2016) – Routledge

Policy Documents: Net Neutrality Bill, Data Protection Bill 

Unit-6
Teaching Hours:10
Technology, Art and Literature
 

 

In this unit, students engage with two aspects primarily; the first is to study the implications of technology in the area of literature, creative arts and cinema. The second is to analyze/read/watch narratives that demonstrate how different cultural forms narrate technological modernity.

Selected chapter/s from Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology R. Sawhney (2015) ’Introduction,’ Studies in South Asian Film and Media: special issue on

science fiction, vol 6, no 2.

Selected short stories by Anil Menon/Manjula Padmanabhan
Selected sections from Kavita Phillip & Beatrize da Costa eds. (2008)
Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism and Technoscience. MIT Press.

Rokeya Sakahawat Hossain (1905) Sultana’s Dream

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html Afra Shafiq - https://www.entersultanasreality.com/
Rohini Devasher’s astronomy based video art

http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/16/the-digital-artisans-manifesto-by-richard- barbrook-and-pit-schultz/

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

Walter Benjamin – “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Cyborg Manifesto – Donna Haraway (1985) – 
Socialist Review
A Murphie & J. Potts (2002) ‘Introduction in Culture and Technology. Palgrave, pp 1-10. Murphie & Potts ‘Theoretical Frameworks’, pp. 11-38.
Martin Heidegger (1977) 
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. Garland Publishing Inc.
Hard and Jamison (2005) 
Hubris and Hybrids: A Cultural History of Technology and Science. London & NYC: Routledge

Manjula Padmanabhan - Harvest
Asha Achuthan (n.d.) Re-wiring Bodies. CIS, Bangalore.

Chris Shilling (2005) “Technological Bodies” in The Body in Culture, Technology and Society. Sage, pp 173-197.
Paulo Verno

Anne Balsamo (1996) ‘The Role of the Body in Feminist Cultural Studies of Science and Technology’ in Technologies of the Gendered Body. Duke Univ Press, pp 157-64. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/In-the-future-humans-will-become- cyborgs/articleshow/433959.cms http://indiafuturesociety.org/category/general/cyborg

https://qz.com/1424235/these-real-life-cyborgs-are-changing-their-brains-by-enhancing-their- bodies/

 

Lazzarato, Maurizio (1996). "Immaterial labor". In Virno, Paolo; Hardt, Michael (eds.). Radical Thought in Italy : A Potential Politics. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 142–157. 

 

Chinmayai Arun (n.d) “Paperthin Safeguards and Mass Surveillance in India.” CIS, Bangalore - https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/paper-thin-safeguards.pdf “State of Cyber-Security and Surveillance in India: a Review of the Legal Landscape.” A Report by CIS, Bangalore.

The Radia Tapes - https://pad.ma/grid/title/list==zi:The_Radia_Tap%28e%29s This or That Particular Person (Subasri Krishnan, 2015, PSBT)

 

Ashis Nandy (1978-79) “The Traditions of Technology,” Alternatives 4 (3): 371-85. Selected chapters from Shiv Visvanathan (1997) A Carnival for Science: Essays in Science, Technology & Development. OUP.

Claude Alvares (1979) ‘Indian Technology and Culture: 1498-1757.’ Allied Publishers, pp 46- 74.

David Arnold (2013) ‘India’s Technological Imaginary’ in Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity. University of Chicago Press.

Robert Geraci, ‘Navigating Science and Technology in Bangalore’, in Temples of Modernity: Nationalism, Hinduism and Transhumanism in South Indian Science. Lexington Books, pp 13- 34.

Kavita Phillip “Postcolonial Technopolitics,” The Salon, vol 3.

 

Selected Chapters - A Companion to Digital Studies (2004) – Blackwell Publishing

Chapter 1: Introduction to Digital Humanities Chapter 8: Literary Studies
Chapter 26: Digital Media and the Analysis of Film

Selected Chapters: The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars

 

Chapter 3: The Elements of Digital Humanities: Text and Document
Chapter 4: The Elements of Digital Humanities: Object, Artifact, Image, Sound, Space

Lisa Spiro – “This is why we fight; defining the values of digital humanities” – Debates in the Digital Humanities – 2012

Selected essays from - Doing Digital Humanities; Practice, Training, Research (2016) – Routledge

Policy Documents: Net Neutrality Bill, Data Protection Bill

 

Selected chapter/s from Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology R. Sawhney (2015) ’Introduction,’ Studies in South Asian Film and Media: special issue on

science fiction, vol 6, no 2.

Selected short stories by Anil Menon/Manjula Padmanabhan
Selected sections from Kavita Phillip & Beatrize da Costa eds. (2008) 
Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism and Technoscience. MIT Press.

Rokeya Sakahawat Hossain (1905) Sultana’s Dream

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html Afra Shafiq - https://www.entersultanasreality.com/
Rohini Devasher’s astronomy based video art

http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/16/the-digital-artisans-manifesto-by-richard- barbrook-and-pit-schultz/ 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Walter Benjamin – “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Cyborg Manifesto – Donna Haraway (1985) –
Socialist Review
A Murphie & J. Potts (2002) ‘Introduction in Culture and Technology. Palgrave, pp 1-10. Murphie & Potts ‘Theoretical Frameworks’, pp. 11-38.
Martin Heidegger (1977)
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. Garland Publishing Inc.
Hard and Jamison (2005)
Hubris and Hybrids: A Cultural History of Technology and Science. London & NYC: Routledge

Manjula Padmanabhan - Harvest
Asha Achuthan (n.d.) Re-wiring Bodies. CIS, Bangalore.

Chris Shilling (2005) “Technological Bodies” in The Body in Culture, Technology and Society. Sage, pp 173-197.
Paulo Verno

Anne Balsamo (1996) ‘The Role of the Body in Feminist Cultural Studies of Science and Technology’ in Technologies of the Gendered Body. Duke Univ Press, pp 157-64. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/In-the-future-humans-will-become- cyborgs/articleshow/433959.cms http://indiafuturesociety.org/category/general/cyborg

https://qz.com/1424235/these-real-life-cyborgs-are-changing-their-brains-by-enhancing-their- bodies/

Lazzarato, Maurizio (1996). "Immaterial labor". In Virno, Paolo; Hardt, Michael (eds.). Radical Thought in Italy : A Potential Politics. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 142–157. 

 

Chinmayai Arun (n.d) “Paperthin Safeguards and Mass Surveillance in India.” CIS, Bangalore - https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/paper-thin-safeguards.pdf “State of Cyber-Security and Surveillance in India: a Review of the Legal Landscape.” A Report by CIS, Bangalore.

The Radia Tapes - https://pad.ma/grid/title/list==zi:The_Radia_Tap%28e%29s This or That Particular Person (Subasri Krishnan, 2015, PSBT)

 

Ashis Nandy (1978-79) “The Traditions of Technology,” Alternatives 4 (3): 371-85. Selected chapters from Shiv Visvanathan (1997) A Carnival for Science: Essays in Science, Technology & Development. OUP.

Claude Alvares (1979) ‘Indian Technology and Culture: 1498-1757.’ Allied Publishers, pp 46- 74.

David Arnold (2013) ‘India’s Technological Imaginary’ in Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity. University of Chicago Press.

Robert Geraci, ‘Navigating Science and Technology in Bangalore’, in Temples of Modernity: Nationalism, Hinduism and Transhumanism in South Indian Science. Lexington Books, pp 13- 34.

Kavita Phillip “Postcolonial Technopolitics,” The Salon, vol 3.

 

Selected Chapters - A Companion to Digital Studies (2004) – Blackwell Publishing

Chapter 1: Introduction to Digital Humanities Chapter 8: Literary Studies
Chapter 26: Digital Media and the Analysis of Film

Selected Chapters: The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars

 

Chapter 3: The Elements of Digital Humanities: Text and Document
Chapter 4: The Elements of Digital Humanities: Object, Artifact, Image, Sound, Space

Lisa Spiro – “This is why we fight; defining the values of digital humanities” – Debates in the Digital Humanities – 2012

Selected essays from - Doing Digital Humanities; Practice, Training, Research (2016) – Routledge

Policy Documents: Net Neutrality Bill, Data Protection Bill

 

Selected chapter/s from Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology R. Sawhney (2015) ’Introduction,’ Studies in South Asian Film and Media: special issue on

science fiction, vol 6, no 2.

Selected short stories by Anil Menon/Manjula Padmanabhan
Selected sections from Kavita Phillip & Beatrize da Costa eds. (2008)
Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism and Technoscience. MIT Press.

Rokeya Sakahawat Hossain (1905) Sultana’s Dream

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html Afra Shafiq - https://www.entersultanasreality.com/
Rohini Devasher’s astronomy based video art

http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/16/the-digital-artisans-manifesto-by-richard- barbrook-and-pit-schultz/ 

Evaluation Pattern

 

70% of the marks will be collected through the semester through class assignments, presentations, written tests, student-led seminars, and group projects.

30% of the marks will be a 3000-word research paper on a topic decided in consultation with faculty OR a digital humanities online archive/database/data visualisation project.

BMEC233 - POSTCOLONIAL SPATIALITIES (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Course Description: This course is built around the premise of negotiating power through spatialities in the context of postcoloniality. While studies in postcolonialism often foreground the temporal vectors, increasingly, postcolonial studies is now being reconfigured in new and emerging contemporary contexts through a critical reading of spaces. Illustrative texts and readings would be undertaken for discussion in the course in an attempt to create new directions in engaging with the postcolonial geographies.

Course Outcome

 

At the end of the course, students would be able to:

  1. Identify spatility and its discursive construction in the contemporary contexts

  2. Locate and position issues, problems, and areas that can generate new modes

    of thinking about spatiality in the context of postcolonial discourses

  3. Map spaces through and generate the axes that determine meaning of spaces

  4. Create , evaluate and develop modes of mapping, reading, critiquing and

    analysing postcolonial spatialties.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
Introduction
 

 

This module will introduce coloniality, modernity as well as spatiality thereby linking the postcolonial question with time, space and discourses that emanatethereof. Readings around theorisations of space and human geography, as well as basic postcolonial concepts will be included here.

Doreen Massey: “On Space and the City”
Edward Soja: “History:Geography:Modernity” Henri Lefebvre: From
State, Space, World
Michel Foucault: Heterotopia
Arjun Appadurai: From
Modernity at Large
Pramod Nayar: from Colonial Voices
David Mackay “Agents of the Empire”
Concepts from
Beginning Postcolonialism by McLeod 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:15
Postcolonial Cities and Spatiality
 

 

  1. Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

  2. Speaking the Unspeakable: London, Cambridge and the Caribbean by Paul Sharrad in De-Scribing Empire

  3. The Cybermohalla Project

  4. Selections from Trickster City by Sweta Sarda

  5. The Slave of MS H.6 by Amitav Ghosh

  6. Selections from Janaki Nair’s Promise of Metropolis

  7. Selections from Priya Jaikumar’s Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed Space.

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:30
Postcolonial Spatiality in Fiction
 

 

  1. Amitav Ghosh, Gun Island

  2. Shubhangi Swaroop, Latitudes of Longing

  3. J M Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

  4. Kipling, “The Bridge-Builders”

Text Books And Reference Books:

Doreen Massey: “On Space and the City”
Edward Soja: “History:Geography:Modernity” Henri Lefebvre: From
State, Space, World
Michel Foucault: Heterotopia
Arjun Appadurai: From
Modernity at Large
Pramod Nayar: from Colonial Voices
David Mackay “Agents of the Empire”
Concepts from
Beginning Postcolonialism by 

Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place
Speaking the Unspeakable: London, Cambridge and the Caribbean by Paul Sharrad in De-Scribing Empire
The Cybermohalla Project
Selections from Trickster City by Sweta Sarda
The Slave of MS H.6 by Amitav Ghosh
Selections from Janaki Nair’s Promise of Metropolis
Selections from Priya Jaikumar’s Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed Space
Amitav Ghosh, Gun Island
Shubhangi Swaroop, Latitudes of Longing
J M Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Kipling, “The Bridge-Builders” 
Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Doreen Massey: “On Space and the City”
Edward Soja: “History:Geography:Modernity” Henri Lefebvre: From 
State, Space, World
Michel Foucault: Heterotopia
Arjun Appadurai: From 
Modernity at Large
Pramod Nayar: from Colonial Voices
David Mackay “Agents of the Empire”
Concepts from 
Beginning Postcolonialism by 

Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place
Speaking the Unspeakable: London, Cambridge and the Caribbean by Paul Sharrad in De-Scribing Empire
The Cybermohalla Project
Selections from Trickster City by Sweta Sarda
The Slave of MS H.6 by Amitav Ghosh
Selections from Janaki Nair’s Promise of Metropolis
Selections from Priya Jaikumar’s Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed Space

 

Amitav Ghosh, Gun Island
Shubhangi Swaroop, Latitudes of Longing
J M Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Kipling, “The Bridge-Builders” 
Evaluation Pattern

 

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group assignments, and a 2hr written exam. The end semester exam will be for 30%.

BMEC241A - MATERIAL CULTURE STUDIES (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

Course Description:

The influence and presence of the past is felt everywhere and every day in our lives. Movies, newspapers or the internet bombard us and expose us to the past – both familiar and unfamiliar. However, the barrage of information and the forces of globalization have led to increasing questions on the relevance and the value of the past – indeed a denial even. And what these vestiges of the past, if not material culture? Material Culture is less a subject of study and more a way of encountering the world. We are social beings, but our social relations are mediatedand activatedby and through things. We use objects to build our identities, our relationships and our means of survival and pleasure. This course will engage the students with the myriad ways in which the past, though no longer present – is a presence in our lives today – through Material Culture. If we have to investigate human past and understand history – we cannot hope to even try without grasping material culture. 

It will introduce the students to think materially, relate to their memories of their own past and make them aware of the multiple perspectives which will enable them to read, write and reflect on the past; or in other words, make history. Hence, we will examine anthropological approaches to material culture and consumption: the practices, relations, and rituals through which things -- from food and clothing to shell valuables or money – become meaningful. Readings will include classic works of anthropology and social theory as well as recent ethnographies of western capitalist, colonial/postcolonial and postsocialist settings. Some questions we will explore include: how is the value or significance of objects created in different social contexts, from ritualized gift exchange to shopping malls? Should we understand commodities and other items of material culture as fulfillments of human needs, or perhaps as symbols that ‘say’ something about their users (and if so, what)? What kind of light can they shed on matters of social structure and inequality, national or class identity, values and morality, or processes of change at particular historical moments?

Course Objectives:

·      To familiarize the students with the idea that they must be aware that objects themselves are information-bearing entities. As such, they pose many parallel, yet some unique, qualities with respect to the text and data usually addressed by information science.

·      To address non-textual objects (images, artifacts, etc.) as information-bearing entities subject to many of the same classification and retrieval practices applied to textual information--with a number of specific caveats.

·      To evaluate how the choices of tags, labels, and classification criteria affect both information practices and user experiences.

·      To understand how a study of objects/material culture and their arrangement/description is more ‘physical’ than that of texts, as their presentation creates a very spatially-based constructed environment.

·      To analyze how descriptive and classification strategies affect both viewers’ interpretations and professionals’ information practices.

·      How myriad different professionals and academics – from museologists and art historians to librarians and social scientists – have addressed questions of interpreting material objects.

·      To address the emerging tension between traditional museological professionals associated with ‘hard’ artifacts and advocates of virtual museums – and evaluate how issues of representation and description shift in the context of ‘going virtual’ in museums.

 

·      To familiarize the students with the origins of traditional institutions that build and maintain collections of objects (libraries, archives, and museums) and how they are adapting to fundamental social and technological change at the beginning of the 21st century

Course Outcome

Learning Outcomes:

·       To gain skills required for humanities and social sciences research at the standard of a postgraduate degree, particularly skills to conduct research using qualitative approaches.

·       To understand what material culture is, and its origin as an area of study in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

·       To develop skills in interdisciplinary thinking and the ability to apply relevant theoretical ideas to examine material culture.

·       Discernment of the importance of materiality and making in the production and shaping of culture.

·       Understanding of the complex and multiple ways that objects and people relate in both the past and in the present using trans-disciplinary perspectives.

·       To develop the ability to interpret and otherwise make meaning from objects using methods and theories from multiple disciplines including but not limited to art history, archaeology, anthropology, design, folklore/folklife studies, geography, history, literary studies, landscape history, and science studies.

Students will learn to critically engage with representations of the past in the present through material remains, which will enable them to analyze and use evidence in interrogating historical accounts, and be able to critically reflect and engage with the interface between the past and the present, fostering a healthy appreciation for history and its imprint on our present world.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:12
Why Study Things?
 

a)    Mind in Matter – Theories of Things, History from Things

b)   Why We Need Things: Interrogating Evidence and Material Culture Studies

 

c)    Why Collect Things: Archaeology, Anthropology and Material Culture Studies

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:16
Ideology and Material Culture: The Use and Abuse of History
 

a)    Voice and the Subject: Consumerism in a Material World – Commodifying Things and the Politics of Display.

b)   Narratives and Counter-narratives: Material Empires and the Other’s Object.

 

c)    Colonizing Knowledges: Racializing the ‘Other’; Latent and Manifest Orientalism.

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:16
Making Things Mean
 

a)    Engendering Things: Sexism, Patriarchy, and the codification of material cultural practice

b)   Contemptible Collectibles:Materialism; Museums and Collections

 

c)    The Public Life of Things: Politicization of Material Culture.

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:16
Weaving Identities: Material Culture and Social Self
 

a)    Memory and the Production of Self – Bodily Adornment, Theorizing Taste and the Class Experience

b)   Comedy of Values: Advertising and Consumer Society – Objects Recontextualized; The Dialectics of Shopping

c)    The Unequal Lives of Persons and Things: Waste and Want; Things as Extensions of Persons. 

The Death of Things: Dilemmas of Classification and the Problem of Agency and Ownership

Text Books And Reference Books:

Essential Readings

·     Chakrabarti, D K. 2006. The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology: The Archaeological Foundations of Ancient India, Stone Age to AD 13th century, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

·     Gerritsen, Anne and Giorgio Riello (eds.). 2015. Writing Material Culture History, London: Bloomsbury.

·     Hurcombe, Linda M. 2007. Archaeological Artefacts as Material, New York: Routledge.

·     Jones, Andrew (ed.) 2007. Memory and Material Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

·     Schiffer, Michael B. and Richard A. Gould (eds.). 1981. Modern Material Culture: The Archaeology of Us, New York: Academic Press.

·     Thapar, Romila. 2005. Somanatha: The Many Voices of History, New Delhi: Verso.

·     Thapar, Romila. 2014. The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History, New Delhi: Aleph. 

·     Tilley, Christopher et.al. (eds.). 2006. Handbook of Material Culture, London:  Sage Publications.

·     Varma, Supriya. 2003. Ayodhya: Archaeology, History and Politics. Ababhash, July-Sept., Kolkata, pp. 53-63.

 

·     Woodward, Ian. 2007. Understanding Material Culture, Los Angeles:  Sage Publications.

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Suggested readings

·       Batchelor, Jennie and Cora Kaplan. 2007. Women and Material Culture, 1660–1830, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

·       Fritsch, Juliette. 2004. Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture, New York and London: Routledge.

·       Gosden, Chris and Chantal Knowles (eds.) 2001. Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford, New York: Berg.

·       Hallam, Elizabeth and Jenny Hockey. 2001. Death, Memory and Material Culture, Oxford and New York: Berg.

·      Jamir, T and M Hazarika (eds). 2014. Fifty years after Daojali-Hading: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Northeast India, New Delhi: Research India Press. 

·       Jones, Andrew. 2007. Memory and Material Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

·      Knappett, Carl, 2009. An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society, Oxford: Berg.

·      Korasick, John E. 2005. Collecting Africa: African Material Culture Displays and the American Image of Africa, 1885-1930,PhD Thesis submitted to Saint Louis University.

·      Miller, Daniel. 2001. Anthropology and the Individual: A Material Culture Perspective, Routledge.

·      Pratap, A. 2014. Indian Archaeology and Postmodernism: Fashion or Necessity? Ancient Asia, 5: 2, pp. 1-4.

·      Ratnagar, S. 2016. Harappan Archaeology: Early State Perspectives, Delhi: Primus. 

·      Riggs, E P and Z R Jat. 2016. The 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan: Migration, Material Landscapes, and the Making of Nations, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 3 (2). 

·       Scapp, Ron and Seitz, Brian (eds.). 2013. Living with Class: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

·      Schug, Gwen Robbins & S. R. Walimbe (eds). 2016. A Companion to South Asia in the Past, New Delhi: Wiley Blackwell. 

·      Simte, Lamminthang L. 2015. Rocks, Relics and Paths: Tracing Places in the Early Historic Landscapes of the Southern Vindhyas.Unpublished PhD Thesis submitted to Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

·      Simte, Lamminthang L. and Prerana Srimaal. 2018. Timeless Aesthetics? Rock art Studies as Sites of Contestation' in the Southern Vindhyan Landscape. South Asian Cultural Studies (SACS) Journal, Special Issue on Imaging South Asian culture in non-English: Reconstructing popular textual and visual representations, pp. 34-43.

·      Srimaal, Prerana and Lamminthang L. Simte. 2017. Values, Valorisation, and the 'Package': The Conservation of Early Buddhist Heritage-Sites of Central India, in, Sanjay Garg (ed.), Archaeology of Buddhism: Recent Discoveries in South Asia, New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 501-514.

·       Staniforth, Mark. 2002. Material Culture and Consumer Society: Dependent Colonies in Colonial Australia, New York: Springer-Science+Business Media.

·       Stocking, George W. Jr. 1985. Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture. London: The University of Wisconsin Press.

·       Swann, Marjorie. 2001. Curiosities and Texts: The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

·       Turnau, Irena. 1991. History of Dress in Central and Eastern Europe from Sixteenth to the eighteenth Century. Warszawa.

·       Urgo, Joseph R., and Ann J. Abadie (eds.) 2007. Faulkner and Material Culture, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

·      Varma, Supriya and Jaya Menon. 2017. Households at Work: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Variation in Ceramic Production in North India, Ethnoarchaeology, 9:1, pp. 3-29, DOI: 10.1080/19442890.2017.1278862. 

Weatherill, Lorna. 1998. Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660–1760, London and New York: Routledge.

Evaluation Pattern

CIA - Evaluation Pattern

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Total

20

20

40

 

Mid Semester Examination

Submission

Presentation

Total

30

20

50

 

End Semester Examination

Submission

Presentation

Total

30

20

50

BMEC241B - CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

Course Description

Cultural Anthropology is the study of human social life in the broadest possible way. Traditionally, Anthropologists have studied "tribes" to understand how contemporary humans create what is known as "culture" to give meaning to and make sense of the world they live in. The modern-day tribe can be an online group of bike enthusiasts, gourmet food chefs, a saree group or cat lovers who dress their cats. Anthropologists are interested in all types of societies, and the whole range of human experiences. We study social norms, values, practices to understand the diversity and the unity - the unique that sets us apart and the commonality that binds us together.

This course provides an active introduction to the anthropological practice with a “hands-on” ethnographic exercise where students will be creating their account of a specific topic. By learning about the ethnographic methods, students will acquire the critical tools necessary for researching the social and cultural aspects of their society the anthropological way.

 

Course objectives

This course intends to provide its students with a sophisticated, hands-on perspective of the incredible cultural and social diversity in the world around us. The course will train students to view this diversity through an anthropological lens – its theories and methods. It will encourage students to systematically learn about contemporary societies and apply that knowledge to have an in-depth study of one aspect that matters to them.

 

Course Outcome

 

 

  1. Understand culture as a process of sense-making;

  2. Learn about the historical development of Anthropology and the various schools of thought;

  3. Recognise prominent anthropologists and their contribution to the subject;

  4. Reflect on the key concepts and methods in anthropology, and its place in understanding our world;

  5. Develop an in-depth understanding of one aspect of their contemporary culture through an ethnographic exercise.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
Studying Other Humans
 

Is studying other humans a valuable endeavour? What is Anthropology? What is Culture? The Historical Evolution of Anthropology and the Schools of Thought.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:10
Rites of Passage, Rituals, Religion
 

What is a "rite of passage"? Why do rituals become such an essential part of everyday human life, especially during times of change or transition? What role does religion play in human society? Exploring if Atheism, Veganism, or Minimalism can be considered a religion?

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:10
Kinship, Marriage, and Family
 

Marriage extends our circle of kin; the institution of family plays a pivotal role in sustaining these extended networks of kin. What kind of cultural values and norms honour kinship in that society? How do the institutions of kinship, marriage and family fulfil the particular society’s cultural needs?

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:10
The Anthropology of Deviance
 

What are norms? How does deviance help in clarifying the collective cultural values and cultural morality of a society? Does deviance unify society? Exploring the structuralist (Durkheim) and functionalist (Merton) perspective on deviance.

Unit-5
Teaching Hours:15
Methods of Ethnography
 

What is ethnography? How to be an ethnographer in one’s own society? Exploring the process and methods of fieldwork; Cultural-relativism and other guiding ethical principles of anthropology; Taking Fieldnotes; Reflexivity.

Text Books And Reference Books:

Appadurai, A. (1988). Introduction: Place and voice in anthropological theory. Cultural Anthropology3(1), 16-20.

Barnard, A. (2016). Social Anthropology Investigating Human Social Life. United Kingdom: Studymates Limited.

Bernard, H. R. (1988). Research methods in cultural anthropology (p. 117). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Bernard, H. R., & Gravlee, C. C. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology. Rowman & Littlefield.

Bowie, F. (2006). The anthropology of religion. The Blackwell companion to the study of religion, 3-24.

Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural anthropology9(3), 302-338.

Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (Eds.). (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Univ of California Press.

Crang, M., & Cook, I. (2007). Doing ethnographies. Sage.

Fabian, J. (2014). Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object. Columbia University Press.

Fife, W. (2005). Doing Fieldwork: Ethnographic methods for research in developing countries and beyond. Springer.

Fox, R. (1983). Kinship and marriage: An anthropological perspective (Vol. 50). cambridge university press.

Freilich, M., Raybeck, D., & Savishinsky, J. S. (Eds.). (1991). Deviance: anthropological perspectives. Bergin & Garvey.

Friedman, J. (2002). From roots to routes: Tropes for trippers. Anthropological Theory2(1), 21-36.

Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1992). Beyond “culture”: Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural anthropology7(1), 6-23.

Hall, S. (2017). Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History. Noida: Orient Blackswan Private Limited.

Jha, M. (1995). An Introduction to Anthropological Thought. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Marcus, G. E. (2008). The end (s) of ethnography: Social/cultural anthropology's signature form of producing knowledge in transition. Cultural Anthropology23(1), 1-14.

Rapport, N. (2014). Social and cultural anthropology: The key concepts. Routledge.

Rosaldo, R. (1988). Ideology, place, and people without culture. Cultural Anthropology3(1), 77-87.

Spiro, M. E. (1986). Cultural relativism and the future of anthropology. Cultural Anthropology1(3), 259-286.

Turner, T. (1993). Anthropology and multiculturalism: what is anthropology that multiculturalists should be mindful of it?. Cultural anthropology8(4), 411-429.

Walton, D. (2012). Doing Cultural Theory. Sage Publication.

Evaluation Pattern

Assessment Pattern

Course Code

Course Title

CIA (Weightage)

ESE (Weightage)

BMEC232

Theorising Contemporary Culture: An Anthropological Account

70%

30%

 

Mid-Semester Examination (50 marks)

The students are expected to engage with the research on various aspects of urbanisation. For this, they will submit a 1500 words research proposal on one area that they intend to work on later for their end semester submission. The discussion paper will elaborate on their chosen area of research, the rationale for studying that, the theoretical framework they intend to use, brief methodology, and the expected timeframe. Students may incorporate this submission can be incorporated into their final ESE submission.

End-Semester Examination (50 marks)

 

For their end-semester, the students will develop a detailed report (3000 words) based on their in-depth understanding of one aspect of their contemporary culture through an ethnographic exercise.

 

BMEC241C - VISUAL CULTURE (2020 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Course Description: This course introduces students to a range of theoretical apparatus to understand visuality and visual culture. The approaches draw upon a mix of cultural studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, film studies and popular culture. It provides a broad overview of visual culture and problematizes ways of seeing and being seen. It engages with the visual as a site of power, politics and resistance, for example, as in the case of surveillance in the hyper-technological societies we inhabit. The larger objective of the course is to enable students to grapple with complex ideas on their own, and to tussle with concepts, to produce primary research that is insightful. This research will take the form of student-managed and designed publications.
 
The course aims to equip students to

Understand how visuals operate in contemporary society Read visuals in everyday life

Engage and problematize ways of seeing and being seen Critically analyse theories of visual culture and visual arts 

Course Outcome

At the end of the course the student will be equipped to
Critically engage with visuals
Develop a nuanced understanding of reading images
Understand the power and mediation of images in their everyday life Engage with the politics of seeing and being seen

Understand surveillance, dataveillance and voyeurism Critical and Analytical Skills
Research Skills
Visual Communication

Societal Skills

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:20
What is Visual Culture?
 

 

 

What is visuality? How do we acquire ‘ways of seeing’? Who has the right to look and show? What makes images political? How can we map the sub-discipline of Visual Culture? This unit will help students understand the field of visual culture studies and the politics and operational dynamics of a ‘visual’ culture.

CORE TEXTS
W J T Mitchell: “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture
E. Shohat & R Stam,:“Narrativizing Visual Culture
Nicholas Mirzoeff: “The Right to Look”
Franco Berardi: “The Image Dispositif”
Irit Rogof: “Studying Visual Culture”
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
W J T Mitchell: “There are No Visual Media”
John Berger:
Ways of Seeing
Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright: “Images, Power and Politics”

 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:20
Image and Knowledge
 

 

 

This unit looks at some of the basic apparatus/concepts we can use to understand images and visuality. How does representation work? How can we understand spectacle? What is the philosophy of the image?

CORE TEXTS:
Susana Berger,
The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to Early Enlightenment.

 

 

Selected excerpts from Aristotle, The Complete Works
Jonathan Crary: Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture

RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Roland Barthes: “Rhetoric of the Image” from
Image, Music, Text
Marita Sturken: “The Wall, the Screen and the Image”
Chapters from Part III ‘Visual Colonialism/ Visual Transculture’ & Part IV ‘The Gaze, the Body, Sexuality’ in
The Visual Culture Reader

 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:20
Image and Technology
 

 

 

This unit broadly recognises that we inhabit a visual technocracy and attempts to read the visual as mediated and enhanced by technology. It attempts to understand the politics of visual technocracy, both together and by themselves. This unit will make use of the methodologies of Unit I and II to understand the ‘everyday’ we inhabit.

CORE TEXTS
Walter Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility”. Papastergiadis et al: “Screen Cultures and Public Spaces”
Selected chapters from Punathambekar & Mohan: Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia.
John Fiske: “Videotech”, The VCR
Anne Friedberg: “The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze”
The Visual Culture Reader Chapters from Part I ‘Global/Digital’ in The Visual Culture Reader 

Text Books And Reference Books:

W J T Mitchell: “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture

E. Shohat & R Stam,:“Narrativizing Visual Culture
Nicholas Mirzoeff: “The Right to Look”
Franco Berardi: “The Image Dispositif”

Irit Rogof: “Studying Visual Culture” 

Selected excerpts from Aristotle, The Complete Works

Jonathan Crary: Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture 

 

Susana Berger, The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to Early Enlightenment.

 

 

Walter Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility”. Papastergiadis et al: “Screen Cultures and Public Spaces”
Selected chapters from Punathambekar & Mohan: Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia.
John Fiske: “Videotech”, The VCR
Anne Friedberg: “The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze”
The Visual Culture Reader Chapters from Part I ‘Global/Digital’ in The Visual Culture Reader

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Leonard Diepeveen: “Art Museums as Organizers of Culture” James Clifford: “On Collecting Art and Culture”

Sameena Siddiqui: “Civic Archives: Beedi Product Labels” Christopher Pinney: Photos of the Gods

Kajri Jain: “Reconfiguring India's Nationalism, One Grand Statue at a Time”

 Carson, Fiona and Claire Pajaczkowska, editors. Feminist Visual Culture. Edinburg University Press.

Fuery, Patrick and Kelli Fuery. Visual Cultures and Critical Theory. Arnold, 2003. Gruber, Christiane and Sune Haugbole, editors. Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East :

Pinney, Christopher. Photography and Anthropology. Reaktion Books, 2011. Pinney, Christopher and Nicholas Thomas, editors. Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment. Berg, 2001.

Rampley, Matthew, ed. Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, Contexts. Edinburgh UP, 2005.
Smith, Marquard.
Visual Culture Studies. Sage Publications, 2008.
Thakurta, Tapati Guha,
In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata. Primus Books, 2015.

Selected visual essays from http://www.tasveergharindia.net/

Field Visit: NGMA/ Chitrakala Parishad/ any other relevant exhibition site 

Evaluation Pattern

 

 

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group and individual assignments. 30% of the assessment will be in the form of a visual essay, visual archival project or a curatorial project to be presented at the end of the course.

CIAs: Tasks based on research, application, and audio-visual components

 

BMEC331A - NATION, BOUNDARIES, IDENTITIES (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Nation is central to one’s identity - especially in the sense that one’s existence as a human being and the rights that one asserts is also largely defined by the modern nation-state. This also brings into question as to how we make sense of this anomaly called ‘nation’, especially in a decade where more and more people are becoming stateless due to multiple socio-political, legal and historical factors. The course therefore embarks on a discussion on the interaction between identities and nation, the formulation and reformulation of either of the entities through these interactions, and the larger implication of these interactions in the context of India.

 

 

The course aims to:

  1. Provide a basic understanding of the idea of nation-state , identity and boundaries.

  2. Familiarise students with multiple narratives on nation formation and nationalism through an intersectional standpoint.

  3. Introduce students to the politics behind the social construction of Identities.

  4. Understand the mode in which power and privilege works within the context

    of citizenship.

 

 

Course Outcome

 

 

 

This course would enable students to:

  1. Interpret and apply the concepts and ideas introduced in the class to various spaces of engagement - local, national and global.

  2. Recognise the necessity to engage with multiple narratives and the intersection of gender, caste, religion etc, in framing the contours of nation(lism).

  3. Problematise singular understanding of nationalism and Identity.

  4. Critically evaluate and compare the discourse on citizenship with that of the

    discourse on statelessness

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
Are there imagined communities?
 

 

The unit explores thoughts put forward by thinkers on the idea of nation and nationalism. Integral to this exploration is the notion of belongingness to - an identity, a territory, an ethnic group, shared belief systems and so on - that could delineate on multiple levels the notions of being national and anti-national.

  1. How to make sense of nation - discussion with reference to Ernest Renan’s “What is a nation ?” and the distinction between nation and state - refer to excerpts from Ernest Gellner’s Nation and nationalism .-

  2. Excerpts from Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism and excerpts from Partha Chatterjee’s ,The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories to discuss the idea of communities and inclusion and exclusion of the communities.

  3. Naarativizing nation - discussion with reference to Homi Bhabha’s ‘Dissemination: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’ in Homi Bhabha ‘s Nation and Narration.

  4. Discuss the idea of citizenship and rights - refer to Etienne Baliber’s “Citizen Subject” and Dan Smith’s Ethical Uncertainties of nationalism “

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:15
Antionalist Discourses
 

 

This unit explores multiple discourses on nationalism that emerge from various parts of the world and how these discourses are formulated and reformulated based on socio-political factors of a particular period. A significant focus of the unit is to trace how nationalist discourses are largely defined by the presence of the ‘other.’

  1. Nationalism in the contemporary world - recent trends (indicative reading: “Is Nationalism on the Rise? Assessing Global Trends” by Florian Bieber)

  2. Ethno nationalism - populism-white nationalism - Mexican wall , Trump’s populism and Brexit . (Indicative reading “Trump’s populism: Mobilization of nationalist cleavage and the future of US Democracy by Bart Bonikowski; “Racism, Crisis, Brexit” by Satnam Virdee & Brendan McGeever and “Brexit Beyond Borders: Beginning of the EU Collapse and Return to Nationalism” by Leonardo Scuira. )

  3. Nationalism in India - Indicative readings will include the Gandhian , Nehruvian and Ambedkarite idea of the nation; the contemporary notion of ‘India’ / ‘Bharat’; the absence of Muslims from this imagination ( Savarkar and Bharat); the construction of the ‘other’ in Rabindranath, Tagore; Films that construct a particular narrative on the North East, Dalits and women. (Indicative text: S. Nag “Assamese Nationality Question” )

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:15
Borders and Bordering Practices
 

 

This unit attempts to capture some of the notions of borders, the need for these borders and various bordering practices that exclude people/citizens to be part of the nation state.

  1. Borders and cartography ( Indicative reading: “Step Across This Line” by Salman Rushdie ;“Sponge Borders” by Guido Cimadomo and Pilar Martínez Ponce. )

  2. Bordering practices and the politics of power/visibility - legal excerpts on citizenship ( indicative reading Crampton, Jeremy “Maps as social constructions: Power, communication and visualization” and Seyla Benhabib, “Borders, boundaries and Citizenship” to discuss the concept of borders)

  3. Representations of refugees (Indicative reading “Moving images: The media representation of refugees” by Terence Wright and “Framing Frontiers: The Suspended Step towards Visual Construction of Geopolitical Borders” by Saayan Chattopadhyay)

  4. Refugee Camp and detention centers (Indicative reading “What is a Camp?,” in Means Without Ends, and Simon Turner, “What Is a Refugee Camp? Explorations of the Limits and Effects of the Camp. Jessica Anderson, “Cultures of Disbelief” to discuss the narratives on the collective negation of the existence of camps. )

  5. Refugee crises and the legal positions - “A Thousand Little Guantanamos’: Western States and Measures to Prevent the Arrival of Refugees”

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:15
Migration
 

 

The unit explores some of the questions that processes of migration poses to the larger understanding of nation-state, as well as to that of political and cultural identity that nationalist discourses attempts to assert.

  1. Migration; legal policies; immigrants; diaspora and refugees (Indicative texts: UN 1951 Refugee Convention, Van Hear, N. “Diaspora”, Stephen Castles, “Why Migration Policies Fail,)

  2. Migrant /immigrant experience - Refugees experiences ( Indicative text - In the house of silence, movies - Remember the Titans / Sudani from Nigeria / Paradeshi / partition films )

  3. Transnationalism and the Globalised world (Indicative text: Vertovec, “Transnationalism, Migrant Transnationalism and Transformation”, Ludger Pries, “The approach of transnational social spaces: Responding to new configurations of the social and the spatial.”)

  4. Internal migration and ethnocentrism - urbanisation - city and labour ( indicative text - Case study on prejudice over Bengali immigrants in Kerala )

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures. Verso, 1992.
Anderson, Benedict.
The Specter of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World. Verso, 1998.
Arac, Jonathan and Harriet Ritvo (ed.)..
Macropolitics of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism. Duke UP, 1995.
Bensmaia, Reda.
Experimental Nations: Or, the Invention of the Maghreb. Princeton UP, 2003.
Bhabha, Homi K, ed.
Nation and Narration. Routledge, 1990. PN56.N19N38 1990 Chakrabarty, Dipesh and Homi K. Bhabha (ed). Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. U of Chicago P, 2002.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh.
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton UP, 2000.
Corse, Sarah M.
Nationalism and Literature. Cambridge UP, 1996.
Eagleton, Terry, ed.
Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature. U of Minnesota P, 1990. Featherstone, Mike ed. Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. Sage 1990. 1990 Gellner, Ernest. Nationalism. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
Gellner, Ernest.
Encounters with Nationalism. Blackwell, 1994.
Gourgouris, Stathis.
Dream Nation. Stanford UP, 1996.
Hobsbawm, Eric J.
Nations and Nationalism since 1780.
Jameson, Fredric and Masao Miyoshi (ed.).
The Cultures of Globalization. Duke UP, 1998.
Kaplan, Caren ed.
Between Woman and Nation. Duke UP, 1999
Kedourie, Elie.
Nationalism. Blackwell, 1993. JC311.K37 1993
Larsen, Neil.
Determinations: Essays on Theory, Narrative and Nation in the Americas.Verso, 2001.
Lazarus, Neil.
Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World. Cambridge UP, 1999.
Levy, Roger.
Scottish nationalism at the Crossroads. Scottish Academic Press, 1990. Lewis, Pericles. Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel. Cambridge UP, 2000.
Mbembe, Achille.
On the Postcolony. University of California P, 2001.
Mclintock, Anne, Aamir Mufti, Ell Shohat (ed.).
Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives. U of Minnesota P, 1997.
Moghadam, M. Valentine (ed.).
Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in Muslim Societies. Zed Books, 1994.
Mosse, George L.
Nationalism and Sexuality. H. Fertig, 1985.

MA in English and Cultural Studies

56

Samuel, Raphael, ed. Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity. Vol I: History and Politics. London: Routledge, 1989.
Samuel, Raphael, ed.
Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity. Vol II: Minorities and Outsiders. London: Routledge, 1989.

Samuel, Raphael, ed. Patriotism Vol. III: National Fictions. Routledge, 1989.
Sangari, Kumkum.
The Politics of the Possible. Anthem Press, 2002.
Simpson, David.
Romanticism, Nationalism and the Revolt Against Theory. U of Chicago P, 1993.
Smith, Anthony D.
Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. Polity, 2001.

 

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures. Verso, 1992.

Anderson, Benedict. The Specter of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World. Verso, 1998.
Arac, Jonathan and Harriet Ritvo (ed.).. 
Macropolitics of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism. Duke UP, 1995.
Bensmaia, Reda. 
Experimental Nations: Or, the Invention of the Maghreb. Princeton UP, 2003.
Bhabha, Homi K, ed. 
Nation and Narration. Routledge, 1990. PN56.N19N38 1990 Chakrabarty, Dipesh and Homi K. Bhabha (ed). Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. U of Chicago P, 2002.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton UP, 2000.
Corse, Sarah M. 
Nationalism and Literature. Cambridge UP, 1996.
Eagleton, Terry, ed. 
Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature. U of Minnesota P, 1990. Featherstone, Mike ed. Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. Sage 1990. 1990 Gellner, Ernest. Nationalism. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
Gellner, Ernest. 
Encounters with Nationalism. Blackwell, 1994.
Gourgouris, Stathis. 
Dream Nation. Stanford UP, 1996.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. 
Nations and Nationalism since 1780.
Jameson, Fredric and Masao Miyoshi (ed.). 
The Cultures of Globalization. Duke UP, 1998.
Kaplan, Caren ed. 
Between Woman and Nation. Duke UP, 1999
Kedourie, Elie. 
Nationalism. Blackwell, 1993. JC311.K37 1993
Larsen, Neil. 
Determinations: Essays on Theory, Narrative and Nation in the Americas.Verso, 2001.
Lazarus, Neil. 
Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World. Cambridge UP, 1999.
Levy, Roger. 
Scottish nationalism at the Crossroads. Scottish Academic Press, 1990. Lewis, Pericles. Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel. Cambridge UP, 2000.
Mbembe, Achille. 
On the Postcolony. University of California P, 2001.
Mclintock, Anne, Aamir Mufti, Ell Shohat (ed.). 
Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives. U of Minnesota P, 1997.
Moghadam, M. Valentine (ed.). 
Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in Muslim Societies. Zed Books, 1994.
Mosse, George L. 
Nationalism and Sexuality. H. Fertig, 1985.

MA in English and Cultural Studies

56

Samuel, Raphael, ed. Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity. Vol I: History and Politics. London: Routledge, 1989.
Samuel, Raphael, ed. 
Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity. Vol II: Minorities and Outsiders. London: Routledge, 1989.

Samuel, Raphael, ed. Patriotism Vol. III: National Fictions. Routledge, 1989.
Sangari, Kumkum. 
The Politics of the Possible. Anthem Press, 2002.
Simpson, David. 
Romanticism, Nationalism and the Revolt Against Theory. U of Chicago P, 1993.
Smith, Anthony D. 
Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. Polity, 2001.

 

 

Evaluation Pattern

 

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group assignments, and a 2hr written exam. The end semester exam will be for 30%.

CIA - Evaluation Pattern Mid Semester Examination

End Semester Examination

MA in English and Cultural Studies

Individual Assignment

Group Assessment

Mid Semester

20

20

25

Section A

Section B

Section C

Total

2X10=20

1X15=15

1X15=15

50

Section A

Section B

Section C

Total

2X10=20

1X15=15

1X15=15

50

BMEC331B - LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN INDIA (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Language is the mean through which identities are established and expressed. Language becomes a tool through which power is shaped and enacted. This makes language the primary and most systematic means of communication. India being a multilingual and multicultural country offers opportunities to understand the phenomena outlined above in terms of identities, history of language education with respect to English and vernacular languages, complex relationship between caste and language and how language plays a significant role in modern and cosmopolitan India.

Course Objectives:

To create a disciplinary awareness of linguistic identities in India.
To familiarize with the sociolinguistic affairs in India.
To understand the politics of language in India.

Course Outcome

 

An understanding that a social action is crucially mediated by language.
An understanding that language does not exist apart from its community of speakers.
An understanding that language helps establish and express identities.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
Language and Identity
 

 

This unit deals with language, identity and politics of language in India. Linguistic and religious identity in India (DP Pattnayak 1991)
Bloody Language: Clashes and Constructions of Linguistic Nationalism in India (A Aneesh 2010)
Identity in Post-colonial Contexts (Priti Shandu and Christina Higgins (2016) Indigenous Languages (Ganesh Devy 2009)

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:15
Language and Education
 

 

This unit provides a survey of the modes of language transmission in India from colonization to the present.
Colonial Linguistic and Educational Policies (Charles Grant; Wood’s Despatch; Roy’s letter to Lord Amherst)
Gauri Vishwanathan Excerpt from
Masks of Conquest
Gayathri Spivak “The Burden of English”
Ania Loomba “Teaching the Bard in India”
Mohanty, K. A. (2006). Multilingualism of the unequals and predicaments of education in India: Mother tongue or other tongue? In O. Garcia, T. Skutnabb- Kangas, & M. E. Torres-Guzman. Imagining multilingual schools. (pp. 262-279). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
M Madhava Prasad (2011), Language, Education and Political Existence, Seminar, 624

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:15
Language and Caste
 

 

This unit introduces the social life of dominant languages in India especially in the context of caste. It will aim to bring forth debates regarding language and caste.
Macaulay’s Minute (vis-à-vis Chandra Bhan Prasad; Guha “Macaulay’s Minute Revisited” in The Hindu) http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/hinduism/macaulay.html
Dalit literature, language and identity Eleanor Zelliot (2008) M, Dasan, “Englishing Dalits: Problems and Perspectives”
Rita Kothari “Caste in a Casteless Language: English as a language of Dalit Expression”

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:15
Language, Modernity and Cosmopolitanism
 

 

Selections from Chutnefying Hinglish by Rita Kothari (2011) Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (2008)
Masala Shakespeare (Excerpts) by Jonathan Harris (2018)
English and New Caste: Sajith Pai (2018) Scroll article: Indo-Anglican: The Newest and fastest growing caste in India.

The Adivasi Will Not Dance, (Excerpts) by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (2017)

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

Bloody Language: Clashes and Constructions of Linguistic Nationalism in India (A Aneesh 2010)
Identity in Post-colonial Contexts (Priti Shandu and Christina Higgins (2016) Indigenous Languages (Ganesh Devy 2009)

Legislation and Policies in Relation to Sign Language and Sign Language Rights (Tanmoy Bhattacharya and Surinder P. K. Randhawa)

Colonial Linguistic and Educational Policies (Charles Grant; Wood’s Despatch; Roy’s letter to Lord Amherst)
Gauri Vishwanathan Excerpt from
Masks of Conquest
Gayathri Spivak “The Burden of English”
Ania Loomba “Teaching the Bard in India”
Mohanty, K. A. (2006). Multilingualism of the unequals and predicaments of education in India: Mother tongue or other tongue? In O. Garcia, T. Skutnabb- Kangas, & M. E. Torres-Guzman. Imagining multilingual schools. (pp. 262-279). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
M Madhava Prasad (2011), Language, Education and Political Existence, Seminar, 62

Macaulay’s Minute (vis-à-vis Chandra Bhan Prasad; Guha “Macaulay’s Minute Revisited” in The Hindu) http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/hinduism/macaulay.html
Dalit literature, language and identity Eleanor Zelliot (2008) M, Dasan, “Englishing Dalits: Problems and Perspectives”
Rita Kothari “Caste in a Casteless Language: English as a language of Dalit Expression”

Selections from Chutnefying Hinglish by Rita Kothari (2011) Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (2008)
Masala Shakespeare (Excerpts) by Jonathan Harris (2018)
English and New Caste: Sajith Pai (2018) Scroll article: Indo-Anglican: The Newest and fastest growing caste in India.

Painted Words (excerpts) G N Devy 2002)

The Adivasi Will Not Dance, (Excerpts) by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (2017)

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Ghosh, Amitabh. Sea of Poppies, John Murray. 2008.
Devy, G. N. (ed).
Painted Words: An Anthology of Tribal Literature, Penguin Books, 2002. Harris, G. Jonathan. Masala Shakespeare, Aleph Books, 2018.
Joshi, Svati.
Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History. OUP, 1994. Kothari, R & Snell, R. (Eds). Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish. Penguin 2011
Prasad, M. M. 2018. The Role of Language in the arrest of activists by Pune Police.
The Wire, 11 September 2018. https://thewire.in/rights/activists-arrests-pune- police-language
Rajan, Rajeshwari Sunder. Lie of the Land: English Literary Studies in India. OUP, 1992. Sengupta, Papia. Language as Identity in Colonial India, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 Shekhar, S. Hansda. Adivasi will not dance. Speaking Tiger, 2017
Tharu, Susie.
Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties. Orient Longman, 1998. Trivedi, Harish and Devendra Kohli. The Heritage of English. Macmillan, 1995. Uma, Alladi et al. English in the Dalit Context, Orient Blackswan, 2014.
Democratising Education, Seminar, 624, August, 2011.
http://www.india- seminar.com/2011/624.htm

Evaluation Pattern

 

Testing pattern:
CIA 1: 20 Marks (to be decided based on class constitution and contact classes) MSE: Written Exam for 50 marks

 

MSE Pattern:

Section A: 3X10=30 (Conceptual, Critical)
Section B: 1X20 =20 (Critical, Argumentative)
CIA 2: 20 Marks
ESE: Written Exam for 50 Marks
ESE Pattern
Section A: 5X10 =50 marks (Conceptual, Critical, Analytical, Argumentative)

BMEC332A - DEMOCRACY AND CULTURE (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

The nation-state controls as well as directs cultural production through mechanisms of law, governance, and censorship. Historically, as well as in contemporary times, nation-states have leveraged ‘culture’, to control, influence, silence, as well as enable its citizens and subjects. This course looks at a range of examples across cultural practices and historical periods to attempt to understand the relationship between state and culture. The objective of the course is to alert us to the power of the state, while at the same time, point towards possibilities that can be prised open to not only establish an alternative discourse or ideology, but also to hack into the very infrastructure of the state, in the manner of a politics of the commons.

On completing the course, students will be able to: 57

  • Articulate the varying nature of the state’s attempts to regulate cultural practices during colonial and postcolonial periods.

  • Understand some of the key legal judgements and frameworks that impact the production and consumption of culture.

  • Comprehend how cultural regulation works across different mediums such as cinema, theatre, literature etc.

  • Grasp how artists, activists, entrepreneurs, citizens have devised modes of getting around censorship and regulation.

 

Course Outcome

 

  • Ability to identify some of the legal frameworks used to regulate culture, through discussions and case studies.

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between state and culture in colonial and postcolonial times through class discussions, presentations and written submissions.

  • Articulate the distinctive ways in which cultural regulation works across different mediums through case studies and group projects.

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the rights and obligations of citizens in any form of cultural production and circulation, along with creative solutions to censorship regulations.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:20
Culture and the Colonial State
 

 

  1. This unit will explore the various mechanisms and procedures instituted by the colonial government to regulate cultural practices. Indicative topics include:
    i. Theatre – crowds and Police Acts.
    ii. Visual Arts – perspective (Gulam Sheikh), the export of design (Saloni Mathur), and fine arts academies.
    iii. Cinema – Indian Cinematography Committee’s reports; moral panic; WW II and the regulation of film stock; the Information Films of India; taxes and import restrictions; cinema halls and concerns over hygiene.
    iv. Literature – Macaulay’s Minutes on Education and their policy implications.
    v. Dance and Performance – courtesan culture.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:20
Culture and the Postcolonial State
 

 

This unit will look at the renewed investment by the independent Indian state into channelling and regulating cultural production to satisfy the state’s agendas at a regional as well as national level. Indicative topics include:
i. Radio – the banning of film music

ii. Films Division and documentary history
iii. Cinema – film & politics; the regulation of intimacy iv. SITE and early television
v. IPTA and PWA
vi. Censorship –
Sheher aur Sapna, KA Abbas

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:20
Culture and the Neo-Liberal State
 

 

This unit will explore more contemporary state interventions in the regulation of cultural practices. The liberalisation of the media and entertainment industry in the early 1990s in particular had a far reaching impact on media and cultural production. An unprecedented range of media platforms became available to consumers, further accentuated by the development of digital technology. This seeming proliferation of choice and technological possibilities, also marked a shift in aesthetics, transforming practices of representation along with representational politics. Indicative topics include:

i. C&S, OTT and DTH
ii. Video Forensics
iii. Spy Cams and Sting Operations iv. MMS and virality
v. Memes
vi. Biopolitics

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

  1. W. Mazarella: “Making Sense of the Cinema in Late Colonial India”
    G. Vishwanathan: “Currying Favour: The Politics of British Educational and Cultural Policy in India, 1813-1854”
    Veena Oldenburg Talwar:
    The Making of Colonial Lucknow
    Bombay Police Act
    Saloni Mathur:
    India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display
    Pinkerton: “Radio and the Raj: Broadcasting in British India”

  2. D’Souza: “Towards a Cultural Policy in India”
    Avijit Mukul Kishore: “Propoganda/anti propoganda in the Films Division Documentary”
    W. Mazarella:
    Censorium
    Shweta Kishore: CENDIT
    KA Abbas Vs. Union of India (Justice Hidayatullah’s Judgement)
    Krishnaswamy -
    https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl1703/17030830.htm Kripalani: “Building Nationhood Through Broadcast Media in Postcolonial India” Dharwadkar: “India’s theatrical Modernity”
    SV Srinivas: “Is there a Public in the Cinema Hall?”
    Madhava Prasad: “Guardians of the View: the Prohibition of the Private”

     

    A. Rajadhyaksha and I. Abraham: “State, Power and Technological Citizenship in India”
    A. Rajadhyaksha:
    The last Cultural Mile: an inquiry into technology and governance in India

    I. Abraham: “Prehistory of Aadhaar: Body Law and Technology as Postcolonial Assemblage”.
    S. Kumar: “Unimaginable Communities”
    S. Sengupta : “The Terrorist and the Screen”

    S. Sen: Sting Operations - https://sarai.net/decoding-the-big-indian-sting/
    R. Sundaram: Pirate Modernity
    S. Singh: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/20190225- political-cinema-box-office-politics-1455813-2019-02-15
    Kidwai: https://qz.com/india/1460002/how-nehru-modi-used-bollywood-stars-in- indian-politics/
    M. Prasad: Cine-politics
    SV Srinivas: “Roja in ‘Law and Order’ State”
    P. Paul:
    https://sarai.net/can-speak-will-speak-interpreting-digital-forensics/ Britta Ohm: “Televising Gujarat 2002”

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading
  1. W. Mazarella: “Making Sense of the Cinema in Late Colonial India”
    G. Vishwanathan: “Currying Favour: The Politics of British Educational and Cultural Policy in India, 1813-1854”
    Veena Oldenburg Talwar: 
    The Making of Colonial Lucknow
    Bombay Police Act
    Saloni Mathur: 
    India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display
    Pinkerton: “Radio and the Raj: Broadcasting in British India”

  2. D’Souza: “Towards a Cultural Policy in India”
    Avijit Mukul Kishore: “Propoganda/anti propoganda in the Films Division Documentary”
    W. Mazarella: 
    Censorium
    Shweta Kishore: CENDIT
    KA Abbas Vs. Union of India (Justice Hidayatullah’s Judgement)
    Krishnaswamy - 
    https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl1703/17030830.htm Kripalani: “Building Nationhood Through Broadcast Media in Postcolonial India” Dharwadkar: “India’s theatrical Modernity”
    SV Srinivas: “Is there a Public in the Cinema Hall?”
    Madhava Prasad: “Guardians of the View: the Prohibition of the Private”

     

    A. Rajadhyaksha and I. Abraham: “State, Power and Technological Citizenship in India”
    A. Rajadhyaksha: 
    The last Cultural Mile: an inquiry into technology and governance in India

    I. Abraham: “Prehistory of Aadhaar: Body Law and Technology as Postcolonial Assemblage”.
    S. Kumar: “Unimaginable Communities”
    S. Sengupta : “The Terrorist and the Screen”

    S. Sen: Sting Operations - https://sarai.net/decoding-the-big-indian-sting/
    R. Sundaram: Pirate Modernity
    S. Singh: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/20190225- political-cinema-box-office-politics-1455813-2019-02-15
    Kidwai: https://qz.com/india/1460002/how-nehru-modi-used-bollywood-stars-in- indian-politics/
    M. Prasad: Cine-politics
    SV Srinivas: “Roja in ‘Law and Order’ State”
    P. Paul: 
    https://sarai.net/can-speak-will-speak-interpreting-digital-forensics/ Britta Ohm: “Televising Gujarat 2002”

 

Evaluation Pattern

 

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group assignments and individual projects. The remaining 30% will be assessed through a 3000 word submission paper.

BMEC332B - WRITING LIVES: GENRES OF SELF NARRATIVE (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Course Description: This course serves as an introduction to the form of life writing and will provide students with navigating new and emerging narrative directions that this form of writing has begun to take. The fundamental objective of the course is to foreground the contexts in which the speaking human subject forges writing. It includes a variety of autobiographies, self-narratives, memoirs that provide new ways of engaging with the narrativisation of the human question in literary works. The course includes a range of works and the instructor can choose to do specific texts from each unit in the course.

 

Course Outcome

 

  1. Recognise the determining role of the self in narrative production

  2. Develop modes and frameworks to analyse life writings

  3. Evaluate the voice and points of view of writing specific to the genre here

  4. Write and speak about the cultural contexts in the production and reception

of life writings

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:4
Introduction
 

 

This unit will typically introduce the form of self-writing with questions about the form, context of its generation and development, voice, point of view, and also the larger cultural questions about memory and memorialisation through violence, cities, disease and the everyday.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:8
Writing Health and Disease
 

 

This unit introduces works that narrate disease from the point of view of both the patient as well as the care-giver. This will also introduce students to Narrative Medicine as a field of study.

  1. If I had to tell it Again by Gayathri Prabhu

  2. Tangles: The Story of Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me

  3. Atul Gawande Being Mortal

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:12
Writing Gender
 

 

  1. Devaki Nilayamgode’s Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman

  2. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:12
Writing Cities
 

 

  1. Twice-Born by Ateesh Taseer

  2. Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

Unit-5
Teaching Hours:12
Writing Indigeniety, Ecology and the Environment
 

 

Wangaari Maathai Unbowed

 

Leslie Marmon Silko The Turquoise Ledge

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

If I had to tell it Again by Gayathri Prabhu;
Tangles: The Story of Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me
Atul Gawande Being Mortal
Devaki Nilayamgode’s Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Wangaari Maathai Unbowed

Leslie Marmon Silko The Turquoise Ledge

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Andersen, Linda. Autobiography: The New Critical Idiom Series. Routledge, 2001. Brockmeier, Jens and Donald A. Carbaugh. Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography,

Self and Culture. John Benjamin’s Publishing Company, 2001.

Huddart, David. Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography. Routledge, 2008.
Kadar, Marlene and Linda Warley et al. Tracing the Autobiographical. Wilfrid Laurier

UP, 2005.
Mathien, Thomas and D G Wright.
Autobiography as Philosophy: the Philosophical Uses of

Self-Representation. Routledge, 2008.
Mintz, Susannah B.
Unruly Bodies: Life Writing by Women with Disabilities. U of North

Carolina Press, 2007.
Smith, Robert.
Derrida and Autobiography. Cambridge UP, 1995.

Wagner-Eglehaaf, Martina. Ed. Handbook of Autobiography/Auto-Fiction. DE, 2019.

Evaluation Pattern

 

CIA 1 (20 marks)

Any assignment that would enable students to understand the idea of a ‘life writing’ and that enables them to engage with it in a politically engaging manner.

CIA 2- MSE- Written Exam for 50 marks
CIA 3- Library work submission and a creative assignment that would enable

students to produce and interpret a text (20 marks)

MA in English and Cultural Studies

Individual Assignment

Group Assessment

Mid Semester

20

20

25

Mid Semester Examination

End Semester Examination

Section A

Section B

Section C

Total

2X10=20

1X15=15

1X15=15

50

Section A

Section B

Section C

Total

2X10=20

1X15=15

1X15=15

50

BMEC333A - CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

This course will enable those interested in setting up their own independent cultural and creative practices to work out a model and plan to execute. Candidates will be first introduced to the historical and critical context of the ‘culture industry’, tracing its development in neo-liberal and contemporary contexts, looking at a number of models of public and private partnership, as well as independent practice.

The course will provide a theoretical framework to students to locate many of these debates, while also providing practical tools to planning and executing their individual projects. By the end of the course, students should have drafted a plan of action, and also attempted a prototype or experimental execution.

Course Outcome

At the end of the course students will have acquired:

1. A fundamental understanding of the cultural ecology of contemporaray India through class discussions, readings and assignments.

2. A rudimentary understanding of arts foundations such as IFA through class assignments.

3. An opportunity to meet and interact with different cultural practitioners, and thereby to get a first-hand account of the culture industry.

4. A theoretical and conceptual understanding of debates around the cultural and creative industries through readings and assignments.

5. An opportunity to familiarise themselves with various outfits such as Lalit Kala Academy, Sahitya Akademi, NGMA, National Museum, VAG, Marg, Attakalari, Maara, Sandbox Collective and so on.

6. Understanding of the dialectice between state and market and the regulation of cultural production.

7. An opportunity to develop individual ideas for cultural entrepreneurship and to work on a proposal towards these.

8. An opportunity to develop a prototype of their cultural entreprise, while developing issues of sustaiability.

 

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
The Culture Industry
 

In this unit students will engage with historical debates around the culture industry, and get a sense of the development of these within a neo-liberal context.

Adorno & Horkheimer: The Culture Industry

Anmol Vellani: development Without Culture

Anmol Vellani: How not to commodify the arts

David Gartman: Bourdieu and Adorno

India Foundation for the Arts - Arts Research Programme; Arts Practice Programme; Archival Fellowships

 

 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:15
Cultural Enterpreneurs
 

In this unit students will get introduced to a range of independent initiatives and organisations in the field of cultural production.

Attakalari

Maara

Sandbox Collective

Hakara

Urban Lens

Pao Collective

Design Beku

and others. . . 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:15
The Creative Industries
 

In this unit students will get introduced to various debates within contemporaray creative industries.

Culture and Policy

Creative Labour and Value

Economic Models in the Culture Industry

Private-Public Partnership and debates around this model

Ownership, access, gatekeeping

Immaterial Labour

Community Projects 

Ethics of Cultural Practice

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:15
Project Work
 

In this unit, students will work on developing their own creative projects, and will acquire the skills to:

  • write a proposal
  • identify funding agencies
  • prepare a budget
  • plan logistics and execution
  • understand legal and copyright issues.
  • carry out field-work to develop ideas further
  • roll out a prototype

 

Text Books And Reference Books:

Anmol Vellani: How not to Commodify the Arts

Adorno and Horkheimer: The Culture Industry

William Mazarella: Why is Adorno so Repulsive?

Vinay Lal: Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy

UNCTAD Creative Industries Report

Anmol Vellani: The World in a Village: Lessons from K V Subanna's inspirational life in theatre and community

Anmol Vellani: Planned Obsolescence

Terry Flew: The Creative Industries - Culture and Policy

Okwui Enwezor: The Postcolonial Constellation - Creative Art in a State of Permanent Transition

Nicholas Garnham: Concepts of Culture - Public Policy and the Cultural Industries

John Hutnyk: Bad Marxism - capitalism and Cultural Studies

Anmol Vellani: Development Without Culture

David Gartman: Bourdieu and Adorno

Chris Casper: An Open Letter to the Labour Servicing the Culture Industries

 

 

 

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Anmol Vellani: How not to Commodify the Arts

Adorno and Horkheimer: The Culture Industry

William Mazarella: Why is Adorno so Repulsive?

Vinay Lal: Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy

UNCTAD Creative Industries Report

Anmol Vellani: The World in a Village: Lessons from K V Subanna's inspirational life in theatre and community

Anmol Vellani: Planned Obsolescence

Terry Flew: The Creative Industries - Culture and Policy

Okwui Enwezor: The Postcolonial Constellation - Creative Art in a State of Permanent Transition

Nicholas Garnham: Concepts of Culture - Public Policy and the Cultural Industries

John Hutnyk: Bad Marxism - capitalism and Cultural Studies

Anmol Vellani: Development Without Culture

David Gartman: Bourdieu and Adorno

Chris Casper: An Open Letter to the Labour Servicing the Culture Industries

 

 

 

Evaluation Pattern

Evaluation will be on an ongoing basis based on submission of assignemnts, development of the cultural enterprise portfolio, and the final project work.

BMEC333B - INTRODUCTION TO PUBLISHING (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

This course offers an Introdcution to various dimensions of "Publishing" and provides a foundation for students who might be interested in pursuing a career in publishing. In addition to the practical dimensions of publishing, it also offers a theoretical or conceptual understanding of the history of the book, reading publics and politics, censorship, the politics of language, and the history of various Indian languages. The course includes guest lectures by industry professionals, in order to provide an inside understanding of how the industry works. It also includes field trips to publishing houses, printing presses and literary festivals.

Course Objectives:

1. To provide a foundational understanding of the publishing industry in India, with some overview of international publishing networks.

2. To provide an understanding of the economics of publishing.

3. To encourage students to grasp the politics of language and how the publishing industry influences this.

4. To provide a preliminary understanding of the history of the book, especially in South Asia.

5. To familiarise students with the history of various Indian langauages, and the role of publishing in these.

6. To provide an understanding of reading publics, markets, and the the role of literature in shaping the "public sphere"

7. An introduction to some nuances of digital publishing.

8. An understanding of legal provisions around censorship, inlcuding some case studies.

 

Course Outcome

1. Ability to identify major international publishers and explain their business models in India.

2. Ability to identify some Indian publishers, including in Indian languages.

3. Ability to demonstrate an understanding of the importance of multilingual publishing and translation through short assignments.

4. To demonstrate a grasp of the history of the book in South Asia, through class discussion.

5. To develop an understanding of the history of select Indian languages and the role of publishing in these, and to demonstrate this through assignments.

6. To be able to address specific examples and case studies of the creation of "reading publics" and the "public sphere" in different geo-political contexts.

7. To demonstrate a hands-on understanding of different aspects of publishing such a assessing proposals, editing, copy-editing, marketing, design.

8. To demonstrate a good grasp of specific cases around censorship and the legal provisions therein.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
The Publishing Industry
 

An introduction to the major international publishers and their outfits in India.

An overview of select Indian language publishers.

Departments within a publishing house and how each one functions.

Independent publishing.

Bilingual pulications

A brief introduction to Digital publishing

Academic publishing

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:15
Legal Issues in Publishing
 

This unit will look at Copyright laws in India as well as specific case studies of censorship and bans on books across different global and historical contexts.

OUP Vs Delhi University photocopying shop case

Penguine & the 300 Ramayanas

Wendy Donniger & Hinduism

MS Subbalakshmi biography copyright

Film adaptation copyrights

Image reproduction & legal issues

Reprinting rights 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:15
Marketing, Design, Literary Festivals
 

This unit looks at the design, publicity and marketing related to the publishing industry. Students will work with specific case studies to understand the various nuances.

Bangalore Literary Festival

Jaipur Literary Festival

William Dalrymple - The Anarchist marketing & publicity strategy

Arundhati Roy - various examples

Graphic design & book design

Printing, paper, resoultion & other technical issues

The author as celebrity

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:15
Digitl Publishing
 

This unit looks at varous possibilities within digital publishing, the differnt revenu models and possibilities of collaborative publication.

Online platforms

Copyright and other data protection issues

print on demand and other revenue models

Collaborative publishing softwares

Institute of Network Cultures

Piracy and Copyleft

Text Books And Reference Books:

Global 50 Publishing Industry Report 2019

Simon Eliot & Jonathan Rose (Eds) A Companion to the History of the Book, Blackwell Publishing, 2007.

Gary Hall, Digitise this Book: the Politics of New Media, or why we need open access now, Univ. of Minesotta Press, 2008.

Jodi Dean et. al. Materialities of Independent Publishing.

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Women Unlimited

Orientblackswan

tandafonline

www.hakara.in

www.pratilipi.com

www.networkcultures.org

www.penguinerandomhouse.com

e-flux

indiaseminar

EPW

Scroll

The Wire

 

 

 

Evaluation Pattern

Assessment will be on an on-going basis in the form of a portfolio that students will have to make out of various assignments given in class. Each assignment will vary between 5-30 marks, and will add up to a 100 marks in total.

 

BMEC341 - TRANSLATION STUDIES (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

The Course aims to look at the theory and the practice of translation with the help of some insightful essays distributed over 4 units by authors in India and abroad. The latest trends and concerns are discussed at length to give an insight to the students about the nuances and techniques of translation. The course enables the students to engage in meaningful discourse with the logic, necessity and types of translation which makes reading diverse literatures a possibility and an enjoyable experience. The course caters to both, the students who have had translation studies in their UG program as well as to those who are being introduced to it for the first time in the PG program. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the program, the course will focus specifically on issues such as the politics of translation, translating cultures, and related pedagogies.

Course Objectives :

  • Understanding the politics of translation.

  • Appreciating the necessity and need for translation through practical

    readings

    and discussions on translated texts.

  • Examining the nature of translating culture.

Course Outcome

 

  • Learn to appreciate the need for translation in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural

    diversity

  • Understand the reasons for the differences in texts as far as translation is

    concerned

  • Appreciate the changing functions and purposes of translation in the age of

    world literatures

  • Acquire a skill of hands-on experience at translating from a source text to a

    target text.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:4
Translation and Identity Politics
 

 

  1. Unit 1: Translation and Identity Politics

    Spivak - The Politics of Translation Nayar - Subalternity and Translation

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:16
Visual Texts and Translating Cultures
 

 

Death Note
Paris, Je Taime
In the Mood for Love
Text: Translating Culture
Grammars of Living Break their Tense: World Englishes and Cultural Translation: Involuntary Association

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:20
Translation and Pedagogy
 

 

Pedagogic Translation vs. Translation Teaching: A Compromise Between Theory and Practice VALERIA PETROCCHI

Teaching in—and about—Translation SANDRA BERMANN Profession (2010), pp. 82-90
Translation of Children's Literature as a function of its Position in the Literary Polysystem- Zohar Shavit

Writing as Translation: Women's Fictions of Postwar Lebanon-Michelle Hartman- Syracuse University Press
Postcolonial Studies and World Englishes, David Huddart, Liverpool University Press (2014)

From "Literary Translation" to "Cultural Translation": Mori Ōgai and the Plays of Henrik Ibsen by Yōichi Nagashima
Translation Tensions - C. Vimala Rao (Sahitya Akademi publication) Intersectional Pedagogy (2018)

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:20
The Practice of Translation
 

 

A Cross-Cultural History Of International Relations: Book Translations In The Twentieth Century Robert Deutsch
Living in Translation -VERENA CONLEY- Profession (2010), pp. 18-24
Technical Translation Today: Concluding Remarks -Fred Klein TechnicalCommunication

Vol. 29, No. 4, Special Issue on Technical Translation Today (FOURTH QUARTER) CIA 1: Hands-on Translation experience/Critical reading assignment CIA 3: Hands- on Translation experience/Critical reading assignment MSE/ESE: Submission/Presentation for 50 marks each

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

Baker, Mona. Ed. Critical Readings in Translation Studies. London/New York: Routledge, 2010.
Bassnett, S. & A. Lefevre. Eds.
Translation, History and Culture. Princeton: UP, 1990. Bassnett, Susan. Translation Studies. London: Routledge, 2002.

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Dasgupta, Subhas. “Tagore's Concept of Translation: A Critical Study” Indian Literature
Munday,Jeremy. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London: Routledge, 2001.

Vol. 56, No. 3 (269) (May/June 2012), pp. 132-144.
Dharwadker, Vinay. “A. K. Ramanujan’s Theory and Practice of Translation”,
Post- Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. Eds. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi. London: Routledge, 1999: 114 – 140
Lago, Mary A. “Tagore in Translation: A Case Study in Literary
Exchange”,
Books Abroad, Vol. 46, No. 3 (summer, 1972): 416 – 421
MukheerjeeSujit.
Translation as Discovery. Hyderabad Orient Longman, 2006. Print. Raval, Piyush. “The Task of the Postcolonial (-Subaltern) Translator”, Translation Studies: Contemporary Perspectives on Postcolonial and Subaltern Translations. Ed. PiyushRaval.Viva Books: New Delhi, 2012. Print.
Venuti, Lawrence.
The Translation Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

Evaluation Pattern

CIA I - 20 marks

CIA II- 25 marks

CIA III - 20 marks

ESE - 30 marks

Attendance - 5 marks

BMEC342 - CULTURAL DISABILITY STUDIES (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

This course introduces the cultural and political aspect of disabled people. It proposes to examine disability as a historical, social, and cultural constructions to understand the relationship between power and symbolic meaning. It views disability as a phenomenon of embodied difference. Fundamental cultural concepts of ‘putting things into order’, for instance normality and deviance, health and illness, physical integrity and subjective identity are thereby discussed from a critical point of view. his course will introduce students to the key critical concepts, debates, and questions of practice in the emerging scholarly field of disability studies. Drawing on scholarship in public policy, sociology, history, psychology, anthropology, cultural studies, literature, biomedical ethics, and other academic fields, students will be introduced to the moral, medical, social, minority, and ecological models of disability; explore the histories of particular disability communities; debate ethical questions concerning genetic testing, selective abortion, and disability therapies; study how social inequalities of class, race, nationality, sexuality, and gender related to the lived experiences of the disabled; and learn from the literature and political discourse of disabled artists and activists. This course aims to contribute to the study of central themes of the Modern age: reason, human rights, equality, autonomy and solidarity in relation to social and cultural developments in global and local context.

 

Course Objectives: Through participation in this course, students will able to:

  • problematize disability in connection with critical theories of literary and cultural representation, aesthetics, philosophies and sociologies of the body, the study of society and politics, science and technology.

  • identify some of the major theoretical approaches within Disability Studies to the examination of these representations

  • analyze, in discussion and in written form, some of the implications of these representations for public perceptions of people with disabilities

  • discuss and analyze the ways in which disability and rhetoric (textual and visual) constantly intersect and influence one another

 

Course Outcome

 

  • to use theoretical perspectives to critically analyze central concepts of disability and culture/art

  • to write analytically about texts in accordance with the conventions of textual criticism; i.e. the ability to write sustained, coherent, and persuasive arguments on significant issues that arise from the content at hand

  • to "join the conversation" that is always ongoing among critics and scholars regarding texts, authors, and topics by engaging with secondary sources

  • to work with disabled people to raise awareness about the culture of disability in an appropriate and sensitive manner.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:15
Introduction
 

 

  1. Lennard Davis (2014). Introduction: Disability, Normality and Power
    Simi Linton. (2005). “What is Disability Studies?”
    Anne Waldschmidt (2017). Disability Goes Cultural: The Cultural Model of Disability as an Analytical Tool

    Hanjo Berressem (2017). The Sound of Disability: A Cultural Studies Perspective Shilpaa Anand. (2013) “Historicising Disability in India: Questions of Subject and Method”

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:15
Theorising Disability
 

 

Ato Quayson. (2014). Aesthetic Nervousness
David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder (2014). Narrative Prosthesis
Anita Ghai, (2002) “Disability in the Indian context: Post-colonial perspectives” Fiona Kumari Campbell. (2009). The Project of Ableism.

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:15
Disability and Culture
 

 

Cynthia Barounis (2014), Cripping Heterosexuality, Queering Able-Bodiedness: Murderball, Brokeback Mountain and the Contested Masculine Body.
Ann Millett-Gallant. (2014). Sculpting Body Ideals: Alison Lapper Pregnant and the Public Display of Disability.

Georgina Kleege. (2014). Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account G. Thomas Couser. (2014). Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation.

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:15
Disability and Media Representation
 

 

Tanya Titchkosky (2019). Disability Imaginaries in the News
Ella Houston (2019). Featuring Disabled Women in Advertisements: The Commodification of Diversity?
Beth Haller (2019).Embodying Metaphors: Disability Tropes in Political Cartoons Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (2019). Building a World with Disability in It.

Text Books And Reference Books:
  1. Lennard Davis (2014). Introduction: Disability, Normality and Power
    Simi Linton. (2005). “What is Disability Studies?”
    Anne Waldschmidt (2017). Disability Goes Cultural: The Cultural Model of Disability as an Analytical Tool

    Hanjo Berressem (2017). The Sound of Disability: A Cultural Studies Perspective Shilpaa Anand. (2013) “Historicising Disability in India: Questions of Subject and Method” 

Ato Quayson. (2014). Aesthetic Nervousness

David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder (2014). Narrative Prosthesis
Anita Ghai, (2002) “Disability in the Indian context: Post-colonial perspectives” Fiona Kumari Campbell. (2009). The Project of Ableism.

Cynthia Barounis (2014), Cripping Heterosexuality, Queering Able-Bodiedness: Murderball, Brokeback Mountain and the Contested Masculine Body.
Ann Millett-Gallant. (2014). Sculpting Body Ideals: Alison Lapper Pregnant and the Public Display of Disability.

Georgina Kleege. (2014). Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account G. Thomas Couser. (2014). Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation.

Tanya Titchkosky (2019). Disability Imaginaries in the News
Ella Houston (2019). Featuring Disabled Women in Advertisements: The Commodification of Diversity?
Beth Haller (2019).Embodying Metaphors: Disability Tropes in Political Cartoons Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (2019). Building a World with Disability in It.

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Foucault, M. Madness And Civilization: A History Of Insanity In The Age Of Reason. Vintage Books 1988, c1965. Print.
James Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, (eds.) Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.

Kathryn Allan (ed.) Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Lennard J. Davis, (ed.) The Disability Studies Reader. Routledge, 2006.
Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, (eds.) Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. Modern Language Association, 2002. Tom Shakespeare. Disability Rights and Wrongs. Routledge, 2006

Waldschmidt, Anne, et al., editors. Culture – Theory – Disability: Encounters between Disability Studies and Cultural Studies. Transcript Verlag, 2017.

Evaluation Pattern

 

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group assignments, and a 2hr written exam. The end semester exam will be for 30%.

BMEC343 - SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

Fantasy developed as a genre in literature as a popular medium. Science fiction also developed in the same manner. But both got validity within the realm of literature only recently. The purpose of this course is to understand the relevance of providing space for such dystopian realities and how the populace deciphers the latent content existing within the texts.

Course Objectives:

The paper aims to help students:

·         Identify fantasy and science generated fictions as cultural constructs.

·         Engage critically with the discursive nature of science fictions and fantasies

·         Recognize the correlation between technology and human life

·         Explore the aesthetic and intellectual contexts of science fictions and fantasies

Course Outcome

At the end of the course the students will be able to: 

 

  • Identify and define science fiction

  • Examine and articulate the constructedness science fictions

  • Evaluate the politics of technological interventions and the interface between human and technology

  • Critically analyze the socio-political and cultural contexts that create and regulate science fiction

  • Read and analyze science fiction narratives as ‘political’

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:20
Science Fiction, Fantasy as Thought-Experiments
 

This unit attempts to offer an overview of Science Fiction and Fantasy genres and elucidate the crucial characteristics that make them exercises in intellectual and creative experiments.

 

1.    “The Sandman” – E.T.A. Hoffmann

2.    R.U.R. – Karel Čapek

3.    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland –Lewis Carroll

4.    Science Fiction, Adam Roberts.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:20
Concerns
 

This unit will address some of the fundamental thematic concerns of science-fiction and fantasy narratives.

 1.    A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain (Novel)

2.     The Hobbit J R R Tolkien (Novel)

3.     Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka (Novella)

4.     The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia- Ursula Le Guin

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:20
Popular Cultural Representations
 

The focus of this unit will be on popular cultural representations of science-fictional and fantasy elements. The unit will look address issues of dystopic and utopic representations, artificial intelligence, futuristic environment, alternate realities, etc.

 

1.    Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (movie, 2016)

2.    Black Mirror (Series, 2011- present)

3.    Stranger Things (Series, 2016- present)

4.    Her (movie, 2013)

5.    Avatar (movie, 2009)

Text Books And Reference Books:

Prescribed Texts

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Malmgren, Carl D. (1988). "Towards a Definition of Science Fantasy ". Science Fiction Studies. JSTOR .

Nussbaum, Abigail (April 2, 2015). "Science Fantasy". In Nicholas, Peter. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved May 25, 2017.

Mathews, Richard (2002) [1997]. Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination. New York City, New York and London, England: Routledge.

 

Mendlesohn, Farah (2008). Rhetorics of Fantasy. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.

Cornea, Christine. Science Fiction Cinema: between Fantasy and Reality. Rutgers University Press, 2007.

 James, Edward, and Farah Mendlesohn. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

 

Evaluation Pattern

CIA - Evaluation Pattern

Individual Assignment

Group Assessment

Mid Semester

20

20

25

Mid Semester Examination

Section A

Section B

Section C

Total

2X10=20

1X15=15

1X15=15

50

End Semester Examination

Section A

Section B

Section C

Total

2X10=20

1X15=15

1X15=15

50

BMEC344 - POPULAR CULTURE IN INDIA (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

This course Popular Culture in India will introduce students to the area of popular culture studies within academia. It will trace the trajectories and concerns that determine this area and also the field of study in general. It will specifically acquaint the students and help them engage with forms of popular culture in India and help them read these popular culture forms as ‘texts’ – signifying systems that produce meanings in specific ways. It will look at the politics of the production, dissemination and consumption of these texts.

This course will engage the students in

  • The politics of production, distribution and dissemination of ideologies

    within and without popular cultures in India

  • Tracing a history of the origin and development of popular culture in India

  • Recognizing the politics involved in creating content for mass consumption

  • Understanding the theoretical and academic debates that surround popular

    culture studies

Course Outcome

 

At the end of the course, students would be able to:

  • Develop research questions and debates around theorizing popular cultures

    in India

  • Evaluate contradictory and aberrant readings within popular narratives

  • Examine and evaluate the politics of visuality embedded in popular

    narratives

  • Negotiate with the politics of production, distribution and dissemination

    through a nuanced engagement with theory and practice

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:10
What is Popular Culture?
 

 

  1. This section is intended to be an introduction to popular culture and the presence of popular culture studies in academia. It will engage with the divergent strands of popular culture studies as agential or escapist and how it operates within the country .

    • What is Popular Culture? The History and Evolution of the Genre

    • Popular Culture Studies in Academia

    • Popular Culture in India

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:10
Indian Cinema and Music
 

 

  1. This unit will engage with the ever popular Bollywood and the dominant discourses that surround it whether it be agency or popularity and the homogenization that comes with it. The intention is to use this vantage point to demystify Bollywood and re-engage with popular cinema and music from across the country.

    • Bollywood Cinema and Music

    • Tollywood and Mollywood Cinema and Music

    • Bengali Cinema and Music

    • Bhojpuri and Punjabi Cinema and Music

      • Cinema and music from Marginalised Spaces/Communities: Kashmiri, Adivasi, Dalit and North Eastern communities

      • Indi-Pop and Cringe Pop

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:10
Everyday Day and Street Culture
 

 

  1. This module engages with the everyday and street cultures that become part of our practices of the daily.It looks at a wide variety of cultural forms from television, sports, street food, fine dining, shopping, eating out, home delivery, stardoms, fan cultures to fashion.

    • Television in India

    • Reality Shows

    • Television Dramas in India

    • Cricket and Sports

    • Street Food

    • Shopping

    • Stardoms and Fan Cultures

    • Fashion : Elite and Street, Sustainable Fashion etc

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:15
Folk Cultures and Festivals
 

 

This unit will engage with cultural festivals, melas, art forms, folk cultural forms and other expressions. It will look into the politics of appropriation and subversion and examine the ideas of subcultures, countercultures, contracultures and mainstream cultures.

  • Theyyam

  • Kochi Biennale, Fort Kochi and Papanji

  • Bhangra and Garba

  • Jallikattu and Pongal

  • Bihu and Hornbill Festivals

  • Kumbh Mela

  • Diwali and Dusshera

  • Ram Lila

  • Tarnetar Mela

  • Rann Utsav, Pushkar Fair, Kite Festival, Goa Carnival, Losar Festival,

    Mammallapuram Dance Festival, Jaipur Literary Festival and Others

  • Koovagam Festival

  • Dilli Haat, Chitrakala Parishad, Raagi Kanna, Surajkund Mela and others

Unit-5
Teaching Hours:15
Social Media Cultures
 

 

  1. This section deals with the ubiqitius and inescapable social media landscape we operate within. It will engage with ideas of space and place as reconstituted by these public-private and surveilled spaces and what it does to create our sense of selves and identities.

    • Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter

    • Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion

    • Digital Fandoms

    • Open Source and Torrents

    • Art and Aesthetics in the Age of Digitization

    • Cyberspace, Surveillance and Security

    • Celebrity Cultures

    • Online Shopping

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

  1. Leo Lowenthal: “The Debate Over Art and Popular Culture: A Synopsis” John Fiske: “Understanding the Popular”
    Carla Freccero: Excerpts from
    Popular Culture: An Introduction
    Ashis Nandy and Vinay Lal: Introduction from Fingerprinting Popular Culture

    1. Peter Kveto: “Private Music: Individualism, Authenticity and Genre Boundaries in the Bombay Music Industry”

      Shikha Jhignan: “Sonic Perspectives on Films” (a youtube video by Lopez Design) Narratives from the Hinglish Project by CSDS/ Sarai and SOAS. - https://sarai.net/hinglish-workshop-2015-recordings/

    2. J Milton Yinger: “Contraculture and Subculture”

    3. Donald B Costello: “From Counterculture to Anticulture”

    4. Dick Hebdige: “Travelling Light: One Route into Material Culture”

    5. Allison Maccracken: “Tumblr Youth Subcultures and Media Engagement” Gunnar Iverson:

    6. Rukmini Pande: Excerpts from Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race

    7. Andrew Ross: “Hacking Away at the Counterculture”

    8. Shanti Kumar: “Digital Television in Digital India”

    9. Sangeet Kumar: Twitter as Liveness: #ShamedInSydney and the Paradox of Participatory Live Television

      1. (last two from Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia, Aswin Punathambekar and Sriram Mohan, Editor

        Douglas Rushkoff: Shopping malls

        Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay: “The Discreet Charm of Indian Street Food”
        Boria Majumdar: “Soaps, serials and the CPI(M), Cricket Beats Them All: Cricket and Television in Contemporary India”
        Guy Debord: Excerpts from
        Society of the Spectacle
        Ravikant: “Architecture of intellectual sociality: Tea and Coffeehouses in Post-colonial Delhi”
        Arvind Rajgopal: Excerpts from
        Politics After Television

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Ravi Sundaram: Pirate Modernity
Manishita Dass: Outside the Lettered City
The Feast of Lal Beg from The Other Lucknow
Aditya Nigam: “Theatre of the Urban: The Strange Case of the Monkey Man”, Sarai Reader
Gopal Guru: “Archaeology of Caste”
Daya Pawar: “Son, Eat Your Fill”
Ravi Vasudevan: “The Exhilaration of Dread”
Screenings:
Cities of Sleep (Shaunak Sen), Our Metropolis (Usha Rao & Gautam Sonti) Tin Sheets (Ekta Mittal & Yashashwini Raghunandan)

Evaluation Pattern

 

CIA I and II Combined: Creative and analytical
CIA III and ESE Combined: Organise an event related to any aspect of popular culture - can be a folk and street culture festival etc.
Both practical assignments have to be concluded with a critical and evaluative essay / research article

MA in English and Cultural Studies

Assessments

Marks

CIA I and II

45

CIA III and ESE

50

Attendance

5

Total

100

Total: 100 marks
(Assessments 95 + Attendance 5 = 100)

BMEC345 - URBAN NARRATIVES (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Cities have emerged as one of the most vibrant as well as challenging sites in the modern world, and India is no exception to this. Mobility, travel and migration, have been the defining characteristics of the modern world, often witnessed in catastrophic ways as seen recently in the large- scale forced migration of Syrian refugees into Europe, or the Rohingya ‘crisis’ in Myanmar. This course will introduce students to city narratives across a range of mediums including literature, cinema, visual arts, and architecture. It will enable students to engage with cities as a product of the imagination, as well as real sites that urban planners, residents and travellers negotiate in various ways.

Course Objectives

To introduce a multidisciplinary understanding of cities and urban spaces
To convey an understanding of urban studies within the practice of cultural studies

To understand how travel, migration, displacement and exile shape narratives, experiences and identities.
To engage with the representation of city life across multiple mediums and forms.

To grasp how city-life constructs the identities of the people who reside there.

Course Outcome

 

  • Observe, experience and document the city in different ways.

  • Read closely and interpret various kinds of texts dealing with urban cultures

  • A disciplined writing practice

  • Be able to curate and display their insights and observations in

    engaging and meaningful ways

  • Produce original work – either scholarly or creative

  • Develop collaborative and team working qualities

  • Create interpretive frameworks that will enable a nuanced

    understanding of cities with respect to their socio-political and

    cultural contexts

  • Use cultural texts to recognize and critically engage with the

    politics of travel in various contexts

  • Determine and demonstrate capabilities to read and critique city

    spaces

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:14
Conceptual Frameworks
 

 

  1. Introduces selected conceptual frameworks to engage with the city and urbanism. Readings:
    Michael de Certeau: “Walking in the City”
    Foucault: “Space, Power, and Knowledge”
    Lewis Mumford: What Is a City?”
    Louis Wirth: “Urbanism as a Way of Life”
    Nandy: “Time Travel to a Possible Self”,
    An Ambiguous Journey to the City.
    Ranjani Mazumdar: Introduction from
    Bombay: An Archive of a City
    Shilpa Phadke: Why Loiter?
    Gyan Prakash: “The Urban Turn”, Sarai Reader 2.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:16
Modernity and Cosmopolitanism
 

 

  1. Sugata Srinivasraju: Pickles From Another Land https://vinaylal.wordpress.com/tag/cochins -cosmopolitanism/ Dilip Chitre: The View From Chinchpokeli
    Adil Jusawalla: “Three Uneasy Pieces”

    Selected Essays from Jayant Kaikini ‘s Bombay Stories (Trans. Tejaswini Niranjana) Zach O’Yeah: Hari Majestic/ Hari: A Hero for Hire
    Tejaswini Niranjana: Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious.

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:12
Gender
 

 

Ruth Vanita: “Women in the City”
Shilpa Phadke:
Why Loiter?
R. Varma: Uncivil Lines: 120-58
Indu Anthony:
The Cicilia-ed Project
Sandbox Collective: The Gender Bender Festival
Tejaswini Niranjana: Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious.

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:18
The Unintended City
 

 

Ravi Sundaram: Pirate Modernity
Manishita Dass: Outside the Lettered City
The Feast of Lal Beg from The Other Lucknow
Aditya Nigam: “Theatre of the Urban: The Strange Case of the Monkey Man”, Sarai Reader
Gopal Guru: “Archaeology of Caste”
Daya Pawar: “Son, Eat Your Fill”
Ravi Vasudevan: “The Exhilaration of Dread”
Screenings:
Cities of Sleep (Shaunak Sen), Our Metropolis (Usha Rao & Gautam Sonti) Tin Sheets (Ekta Mittal & Yashashwini Raghunandan)

Text Books And Reference Books:

 

  1. Michael de Certeau: “Walking in the City”
    Foucault: “Space, Power, and Knowledge”
    Lewis Mumford: What Is a City?”
    Louis Wirth: “Urbanism as a Way of Life”
    Nandy: “Time Travel to a Possible Self”,
    An Ambiguous Journey to the City.
    Ranjani Mazumdar: Introduction from
    Bombay: An Archive of a City
    Shilpa Phadke: Why Loiter?
    Gyan Prakash: “The Urban Turn”, Sarai Reader 2

  2. Sugata Srinivasraju: Pickles From Another Land https://vinaylal.wordpress.com/tag/cochins -cosmopolitanism/ Dilip Chitre: The View From Chinchpokeli

  3. Adil Jusawalla: “Three Uneasy Pieces”Selected Essays from Jayant Kaikini ‘s Bombay Stories (Trans. Tejaswini Niranjana) Zach O’Yeah: Hari Majestic/ Hari: A Hero for Hire

    Tejaswini Niranjana: Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious.Ruth Vanita: “Women in the City”

    Shilpa Phadke: Why Loiter?
    R. Varma: Uncivil Lines: 120-58
    Indu Anthony:
    The Cicilia-ed Project
    Sandbox Collective: The Gender Bender FestivalRavi Sundaram: Pirate Modernity

    Manishita Dass: Outside the Lettered City
    The Feast of Lal Beg from The Other Lucknow
    Aditya Nigam: “Theatre of the Urban: The Strange Case of the Monkey Man”, Sarai Reader
    Gopal Guru: “Archaeology of Caste”
    Daya Pawar: “Son, Eat Your Fill”
    Ravi Vasudevan: “The Exhilaration of Dread”
    Screenings:
    Cities of Sleep (Shaunak Sen), Our Metropolis (Usha Rao & Gautam Sonti) Tin Sheets (Ekta Mittal & Yashashwini Raghunandan) 

  4.  

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

http://sarai.net/category/projects/cybermoh alla/

Sarai City Reader 02: Cities of Everyday Life
Sarai Reader on Public Spaces

Evaluation Pattern

 

70% of marks will be assessed on an ongoing basis through individual and group projects, in-class discussions and presentations, written submissions and 30% marks will be awarded for a final project engaging public spaces and communities.

BMEC472 - THE CULTURE OF FOOD (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

Food Choices, for a very long time, were conceptualized to be an innocent by-product of availability and affordability; however, with the emergence of a significant body of publications which probed into studying and analyzing the intersections between class-gender-race-caste-religion and food, Food Choices are being reviewed in an altogether different light. A discipline erstwhile invested with the objective study of production and distribution has had a ‘cultural turn’ as a result of which the mundane acts of cooking and eating have been a site of intense academic inquiry. An interdisciplinary field of inquiry, the history of this discipline though short is very rich precisely because of the interpolations of thoughts and disciplines that led to its formation in the first place. The Course titled The Culture of Food aims to provide learners with a comprehensive understanding of how the acts of food consumption have been academically studied and how using different methodologies at hand, they could probe into the multi-dimensional aspects of food in the context of India, a country with a rich history of culinary-diversity. The main objective of the course is not to appreciate and document the culinary-history/ies and practice/s but to understand the power hegemonies which operate through everyday acts of cooking and eating.

 

 

  • The influence of caste-class-gender-religious intersections on the food choices of individuals.

  • The role of food in the formation of individual/social identity/ies.

  • Food as a site of socio-political discrimination.

  • Representation of food in social media and blogging culture.

  • The role of food in harboring/maintaining convergence and/or

    divergence in a/any culture. 

Course Outcome

  1. By the end of the course, the learners would be able to:

    • Analyze the practices of eating and cooking from Cultural Studies’ perspective.

    • Determine the role of food in constructing individual/social identity/ies.

    • Evaluate the multiple forms of oppression that operate in Indian society by means of questioning the accessibility to the basic resources of food

      and water.

    • Analyze the recent boom in the domain of food writing and evaluate thehegemonies that operate in/through the same.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:14
Introduction
 

 

  1. This unit introduces learners to the seminal works of eminent sociologists and anthropologists in the domain of food consumption with the aim to provide an overview of how the discipline of Food Studies has been influenced by multiple schools of thought over the years. This unit demands a comprehensive reading of three seminal works in the domain of Food Studies by Barthes (1961), Levi-Strauss (1966), and, Bourdieu (1979) alongside the introductory chapter from Ashley’s et al’s book Food and Cultural Studies (2004) and Doing Cooking section by Giard from The Practice of Everyday Life: Living and Cooking (1998). One of the main objectives of this unit is to familiarize the learners with the methodologies of conducting academic study in this field and evaluating whether these prominent methods originating in the West could be implemented in the Indian context.

    1. Barthes, Roland. Towards a psychology of contemporary food consumption. (originally published in 1961)

    2. Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Culinary Triangle. (1966)

    3. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique or the Judgment of Taste. (1979)

    4. Ashley, Bob et al. Food-cultural studies – three paradigms (2004)

    5. De Certeau, Michael, Luce Giard, Pierre Mayol. The Practice of Everyday Life:

      Living and Cooking – Part II Doing-Cooking by Luce Giard (1998)

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:12
Food and Identity
 

 

This unit focuses on the formation of identity through and around the pattern of food consumption and in doing so it focuses on how the idea of India and Indian is constructed, negotiated, and contested, diachronically. While the first article in this section by Pant (2013) provides a historical account of food consumption, Sengupta(2010) provides an insight into the construction of the idea of the native Indian from colonial perspective besides discussing the notion of kitchen as a normative gendered space. The article by Berger (2019), Staples (2014) and Madsen and Gardella (2012) provide an understanding of the gender and caste-class dynamics that influences the consumption pattern of food in the neoliberal era.

  1. Pant, Pushpesh. India: Food and the Making of the Nation (2013)

  2. Sengupta, Jayanta. Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal (2010)

  3. Berger, Rachel. Food, Gender, and Domesticity in Nationalistic North India: Between Digestion and Desire (2019)

  4. Staples, James. Civilizing Tastes: From Caste to Class in South Indian Foodways (2014)

  5. Madsen and Gardella. Udupi Hotels: Entrepreneurship, Reform and Revival (2012)

  6. Movie: Lunch Box (Hindi, 2013) 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:12
Food and Discrimination
 

 

This unit focuses on the multiple modes of discrimination that operates through the allocation of food and attempts to provide an understanding of how the caste-gender- class dynamics affect a person’s right to food and a person’s understanding of her/his right to food. The articles in this unit move from an apparent oppression of food allocation as discussed by Freed (1970) to the politicization of food allocation (Bruckert, 2019), to analyzing food metaphors and its significance in the life of Dalits (Guru, 2009) the unit goes on to understand the biopolitics of food provisioning in the neoliberal era (2011) in an attempt to excavate the multilayered politics of exclusion and discrimination that operates in the domain of food and eating. The novel by Anand (1935) through the portrayal of a life of an untouchable builds up the multiple incidents of violations and restrictions to food and water and the recent documentary Caste on the Menu Card (2015) further initiates a discussion on the same in the contemporary times.

1. Freed, A. Stanley. Caste Ranking and Exchange of Food and water in North Indian Village (1970)

  1. Guru, Gopal. Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies (2009)

  2. Bruckert, Michael. The Politicization of Beef and Meat in Contemporary India:

    Protecting Animals and Alienating Minorities (2019)

  3. Nally, David. The biopolitics of food provisioning. (2011)

  4. Anand, M. The Untouchable. (Originally published in 1935).

  5. Documentary: Caste on the Menu Card (2015)

Unit-4
Teaching Hours:12
Food and Migration
 

 

This unit is invested in providing an understanding of how diasporic identities are constructed and manifested through food consumption and cooking practices in the neo-liberal era. This unit comprises of three articles that focus on the broad topic of migration but are different in their own ways of looking at migration and diasporic identities. While Abbot’s (2016) work focuses on the impact of migrants on the economic aspect of food market, Srinivas (2006) explores the role of women in a diasporic kitchen and Mannur (2009) tries to negotiate the construction of a nationalistic identity away from the nation by food choices and cooking practices. Thenovel (1997) and the movie (2017) throws further light on the role of food and the attachment to homeland for the diasporic Indian community residing in parts of the USA and Europe.

  1. Abbots, Emma-Jayne. Approaches to Food and Migration: Rootedness, Being and Belonging. (2016)

  2. Srinivas, Tulasi. ‘As Mother Made it’: The Cosmopolitan Indian Family, ‘Authentic’ Food and the Construction of Cultural Utopia. (2006)

  3. Mannur, Anita. Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora. (2009)

  4. Divakaruni, C. (1997). The Mistress Of Spices.

  5. Movie: Macher Jhol (Bengali, 2017) 

Unit-5
Teaching Hours:10
Food Writing and Narrativizing
 

 

This unit is designed with an aim to provide the learners an overview of the dominant trends in the domain of food-writing. While Bloom (2008) provides a comprehensive understanding into effective food-writing, Appadurai (1988) analyzes the evolution of national cuisine in the context of India by means of his analysis of cookbooks written over a period of time. The book by Rodgers (2015) deals with the basics of food-blogging while McDonnel (2016) critically analyses the recent fads in food- writing and prominent hashtags which are extremely popular across a range of online platforms. The movie Julie and Julia (2009) provides further understanding on the voyeuristic pleasures associated with cooking and eating thereby providing a visual aspect to the learners on the contemporary trends in food-writing. Bloom, L Z. (2008) Consuming Prose: The Delectable Rhetoric of Food

Writing.

Appadurai, A. (1988). How to make a national cuisine: cookbooks in

contemporary India. Comparative studies in society and history, 30(1), 3-24.

Rodgers, K. (2015). Get Started in Food Writing.

McDonnel, E M (2016). Food Porn: The Conspicuous Consumption of Food in

the Age of Digital Reproduction. 

Text Books And Reference Books:

Abbots, Emma-Jayne. Approaches to Food and Migration: Rootedness, Being and Belonging. (2016)
Srinivas, Tulasi. ‘As Mother Made it’: The Cosmopolitan Indian Family, ‘Authentic’ Food and the Construction of Cultural Utopia. (2006)
Mannur, Anita. Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora. (2009)
Divakaruni, C. (1997). The Mistress Of Spices.
Movie: Macher Jhol (Bengali, 2017) 

Bloom, L Z. (2008) Consuming Prose: The Delectable Rhetoric of Food

Writing.

Appadurai, A. (1988). How to make a national cuisine: cookbooks in

contemporary India. Comparative studies in society and history, 30(1), 3-24.

Rodgers, K. (2015). Get Started in Food Writing.

McDonnel, E M (2016). Food Porn: The Conspicuous Consumption of Food in the Age of Digital Reproduction.

 

Freed, A. Stanley. Caste Ranking and Exchange of Food and water in North Indian Village (1970)

Guru, Gopal. Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies (2009)
Bruckert, Michael. The Politicization of Beef and Meat in Contemporary India:
Protecting Animals and Alienating Minorities (2019)
Nally, David. The biopolitics of food provisioning. (2011)
Anand, M. The Untouchable. (Originally published in 1935).
Documentary: Caste on the Menu Card (2015) 
Pant, Pushpesh. India: Food and the Making of the Nation (2013)

Sengupta, Jayanta. Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food andCuisine in Colonial Bengal (2010)

Berger, Rachel. Food, Gender, and Domesticity in Nationalistic North India:Between Digestion and Desire (2019)

Staples, James. Civilizing Tastes: From Caste to Class in South Indian Foodways (2014)

Madsen and Gardella. Udupi Hotels: Entrepreneurship, Reform and Revival (2012)

Movie: Lunch Box (Hindi, 2013) 
Barthes, Roland. Towards a psychology of contemporary food consumption. (originally published in 1961)
Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Culinary Triangle. (1966)
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique or the Judgment of Taste. (1979)
Ashley, Bob et al. Food-cultural studies – three paradigms (2004)

De Certeau, Michael, Luce Giard, Pierre Mayol. The Practice of Everyday Life:

Living and Cooking – Part II Doing-Cooking by Luce Giard (1998) 
Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Abbots, Emma-Jayne. Approaches to Food and Migration: Rootedness, Being and Belonging. (2016)
Srinivas, Tulasi. ‘As Mother Made it’: The Cosmopolitan Indian Family, ‘Authentic’ Food and the Construction of Cultural Utopia. (2006)
Mannur, Anita. Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora. (2009)
Divakaruni, C. (1997). The Mistress Of Spices.
Movie: Macher Jhol (Bengali, 2017) 

Bloom, L Z. (2008) Consuming Prose: The Delectable Rhetoric of Food

Writing.

Appadurai, A. (1988). How to make a national cuisine: cookbooks in

contemporary India. Comparative studies in society and history30(1), 3-24.

Rodgers, K. (2015). Get Started in Food Writing.

McDonnel, E M (2016). Food Porn: The Conspicuous Consumption of Food in the Age of Digital Reproduction.

 

Freed, A. Stanley. Caste Ranking and Exchange of Food and water in North Indian Village (1970)

Guru, Gopal. Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies (2009)
Bruckert, Michael. The Politicization of Beef and Meat in Contemporary India:
Protecting Animals and Alienating Minorities (2019)
Nally, David. The biopolitics of food provisioning. (2011)
Anand, M. The Untouchable. (Originally published in 1935).
Documentary: Caste on the Menu Card (2015) 
Pant, Pushpesh. India: Food and the Making of the Nation (2013)

Sengupta, Jayanta. Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food andCuisine in Colonial Bengal (2010)

Berger, Rachel. Food, Gender, and Domesticity in Nationalistic North India:Between Digestion and Desire (2019)

Staples, James. Civilizing Tastes: From Caste to Class in South Indian Foodways (2014)

Madsen and Gardella. Udupi Hotels: Entrepreneurship, Reform and Revival (2012)

Movie: Lunch Box (Hindi, 2013) 
Barthes, Roland. Towards a psychology of contemporary food consumption. (originally published in 1961)
Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Culinary Triangle. (1966)
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique or the Judgment of Taste. (1979)
Ashley, Bob et al. Food-cultural studies – three paradigms (2004)

De Certeau, Michael, Luce Giard, Pierre Mayol. The Practice of Everyday Life:

Living and Cooking – Part II Doing-Cooking by Luce Giard (1998) 
Evaluation Pattern

Ongoing evaluations based on student-led seminars, written submissions, and the final project output.

BMEC473 - QUEER ECOLOGIES (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:4

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

 

The space of queer ecologies disruptively invites us to reimagine both the environment and our biology. When applied to our understanding of the ecosystems in which we live, queer studies suggests that new, non-normative ways of defining and understanding ourselves and the universe are desperately needed. At a fundamental level, queer studies is about combating patriarchal ways of oppression by breaking down binary and essentialist ways of thinking: a process that may well be necessary to save our very lives, given the current environmental crisis. In this course, we will explore books, media, and theoretical frameworks through the broad lens of posthumanist discourses, which locate “human animals” as a part of, rather than diametrically opposed to, “nonhuman” animals. None of us may be able to save the entire world, but as Emily Dickinson said: “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not have lived in vain.”

Course Outcome

 

On completion of the course, the learner will be able to:
1. demonstrate familiarity with basic theoretical concepts associated with the theory of queer ecology
2. understand some fundamental critical approaches to interpreting literary and visual texts through this theoretical lens
3. engage in independent critical thinking with reference to both texts and their real- world
contexts
4. demonstrate the ability to express critical thinking in the field in terms of both writing
and presentations.

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:20
Theoretical Frameworks
 

 

Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, “Unnatural Passions?: Notes Toward a Queer Ecology .”
http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_9/title9.html
2. Greta Gaard, “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.”
3. Earth Is Not Your Mother | Alex Johnson | TEDxPaonia <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSFhn1Kv3Q4>
4. Carol Adams,
The Sexual Politics of Meat.
5. Laura Wright, The Vegan Studies Project.

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:20
Ecopoetics
 

 

Coleridge, “Dejection: An Ode”
2. Walt Whitman,
Leaves of Grass
3. Agha Shahid Ali, A Nostalgist’s Map of America 4. Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:20
Postmodernism and the Contemporary Era
 

 

The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander (YouTube video) 2. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (selected scenes)
3.
Supernatural: “LARP and the Real Girl”
3.
The X-Files: “The Postmodern Prometheus”

4. Maggie Stiefvater: The Raven Cycle and Call Down the Hawk 5. Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
6. Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Text Books And Reference Books:

Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, “Unnatural Passions?: Notes Toward a Queer Ecology .”
http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_9/title9.html
Greta Gaard, “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.”
Earth Is Not Your Mother | Alex Johnson | TEDxPaonia <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSFhn1Kv3Q4>
Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat.
Laura Wright, The Vegan Studies Project.
Coleridge, “Dejection: An Ode”
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Agha Shahid Ali, A Nostalgist’s Map of America 4. Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds
The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander (YouTube video) 2. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (selected scenes)
Supernatural: “LARP and the Real Girl”
 The X-Files: “The Postmodern Prometheus”
 Maggie Stiefvater: The Raven Cycle and Call Down the Hawk 5. Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
 Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

 

Anderson, Jill et al. 2012. “Queer ecology: A roundtable discussion” in European Journal of Ecopsychology 3: 82–103.

Alaimo, Stacy. 2010. “Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of ‘Queer’ Animals.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 51–72. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Bagemihl, Bruce. 2000. Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. St. Martin’s Press.

Bauman, Whitney A., ed. 2018. Meaningful Flesh: Reflections on Religion and Nature for a Queer Planet. Santa Barbara, CA: Punctum Books.

Bauman, Whitney A., and Heather Eaton. 2017. “Gender and Queer Studies.” In Grounding Religion, edited by Whitney A. Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin J. O’Brien, 56–71. New York: Routledge.

Bikeland, Janis. 1993. “Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 13-59. Temple University Press.

Chemhuru, Munamato. 2018. “Interpreting Ecofeminist Environmentalism in African Communitarian Philosophy and Ubuntu: An Alternative to Anthropocentrism.” Philosophical Papers 0 (0): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450643.

Donovan, Josephine. 1993. “Animal Rights and Ecofeminist Theory” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 167-94. Temple University Press.

Gaard, Greta, ed. 1993. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Temple University Press. ———. 1993. “Ecofeminism and Native American Cultures: Pushing the Limits of Cultural

Imperialism?” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 295-314.

Temple University Press.
———. 1997. “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.”
Hypatia 12 (1): 114–37.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1997.tb00174.x.
———. 2002. “Vegetarian Ecofeminism: A Review Essay.”
Frontiers: A Journal of Women

Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3: 117-146.
———. 2011. “Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a

Material Feminist Environmentalism” in Feminist Formations 23: 26–53.
———. 2011. “Green, Pink, and Lavender: Banishing Ecophobia Through Queer Ecologies.”

Ethics and the Environment 16 (2): 115–126.
———. 2015. “Ecofeminism and Climate Change.”
Women’s Studies International Forum 49

(March): 20–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.02.004. Garrard, Greg. 2010. “How Queer Is Green?” Configurations 18 (1): 73–96.

https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2010.0009.
91

MA in English and Cultural Studies

Geraldine, Terry. 2009. “No Climate Justice without Gender Justice: An Overview of the Issues,” in Gender & Development 17.1: 5–18.

Glazebrook, T., 2001, “Heidegger and Ecofeminism”, in Re-Reading the Canon: Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger, N. Holland and P. Huntington (eds.), University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 221–251.

———. 2008, Eco-Logic: Erotics of Nature. An Ecofeminist Phenomenology, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Gosine, Andil. 2010. “Non-White Reproduction and Same-Sex Eroticism: Queer Acts against Nature.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer- Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 149–72. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Heckert, Jamie, ed. 2012. “Queer Ecology: A Roundtable Discussion.” European Journal of Ecophyschology 3: 82–103.

Hird, Myra J. 2016. Queering the Non/Human. New York: Routledge.
Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. 2010.
Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals,

Environment. Routledge.
Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto” in
Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The

Reinvention of Nature, 7-42. Free Association Books.
Johnson, Alex. n.d. “How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time.” Orion Magazine. n.d.

https://orionmagazine.org/article/how-to-queer-ecology-once-goose-at-a-time/. Kings, A.E. 2017. “Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism.” Ethics and the

Environment 22 (1): 63–87. https://doi.org/10.2979/ethicsenviro.22.1.04.
Li, Huey-li. 1993. “A Cross-Cultural Critique of Ecofeminism” in
Ecofeminism: Women,

Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 272-94. Temple University Press. Lorde, Audre. 1979. “An Open Letter to Mary Daly.”

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordeopenlettertomarydaly.html. MacGregor, Sherilyn. “A Stranger Silence Still: The Need for Feminist Social Research on

Climate Change,” in The Sociological Review 57 (2009): 124-40.
Mallory, Chaone. 2018. “What’s in a Name? In Defense of Ecofeminism (Not Ecological

Feminisms, Feminist Ecology, or Gender and the Environment): Or ‘Why Ecofeminism Need Not Be Ecofeminine—But So What If It Is?’” Ethics and the Environment 23 (2): 11–35. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee037.

Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona, and Bruce Erickson, eds. 2010a. Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona, and Bruce Erickson. 2010b. “Introduction: A Genealogy of Queer Ecologies.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 1–42. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Morton, Timothy. 2010. “Queer Ecology.” PMLA 125 (2): 273–82. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2010.125.2.273.

Portman, Anne. 2018. “Food Sovereignty and Gender Justice.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (4): 455–466.

Salleh, Ariel. 2017. Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx, and the Postmodern. Zed Books. Sheldon, Mary V. 2012. “So What Happened to Ecofeminism?” KJAS 2 (2): 166–75. Shiva, Vandana. “Women and the Gendered Politics of Food” in Philosophical Topics 37

(2009):17-32.
Sturgeon, Noël. 2010. “Penguin Family Values: The Nature of Planetary Environmental

Reproductive Justice.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited byCatriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 102–33. Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press.
Whitworth, Lauran. “
Goodbye Gauley Mountain, hello eco-camp: Queer environmentalism in

the Anthropocene.” Feminist Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700118788684 

Evaluation Pattern

Ongoing evaluation based on student seminars, written submissions, and the final project output.

BMEC474 - DIGITAL MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY (2019 Batch)

Total Teaching Hours for Semester:60
No of Lecture Hours/Week:4
Max Marks:100
Credits:16

Course Objectives/Course Description

 

As the world increasingly moves to online platforms and digital technology, digital media becomes a pervasive and defining part of our everyday lives. Given this scenario, elementary digital literacy is no longer an optional aspect, but a fundamental literacy that one needs to have in order to navigate the digital world. Disciplines like Digital Humanities and New Media become very important for any student of Humanities and Cultural Studies to be familiar with. This theory course will offer some foundational frameworks necessary to comprehend the digital world in order to understand the possibilities as well as risks it gives rise to. Indicative topics to be covered include issues of digital archives, digital historiography, data instability, cybercrime, the philosophy of digital media, ethical hacking, copyleft and piracy, fake news, virality, digital documentary and so on. This course will provide students with the conceptual foundation to be able to develop their individual capstone projects independently, and incollaboration with professional organisations outside the university. The course will include discussions around theoretical texts as well as a hands-on exploration of digital tools and technologies. 

Course Outcome

A fundamental understanding of the digital humanities acquired through a broad survey of the history, approaches, and projects that are helping to define it.

An understanding of the ways in which digital technology has compelled various disciplines to adopt new methodological approaches - through assignments and discussions.

A first-hand knowledge of selected digital tools that students will use in their final project work.

The ability to lead independent and peer learning - through coursework and assignments.

A fully developed research proposal that students will implement side-by-side in a public domain or in collaboration with a partner institution/organisation.

 

Unit-1
Teaching Hours:20
The Digital Turn
 

This unit will engage with what is now popularly known as the "digital turn" and its impact on a wide range of disciplines within the Humanities. In particular we will focus on:

  • Digital Media - eveybody is a journalist, photographer and a filmmaker
  • Social media - transforming social systems and notions of the "self"
  • Digital Archives - the politics of archives; significance for the discipline of history 
  • Community portals and archives - questions raised for anthropology
  • Piracy & hacking
  • The deep web
  • The internet of things
  • Digital surveillance
  • Digital forensics

 

Unit-2
Teaching Hours:20
Digital Tools
 

This unti will deal with acquiring a hands-on understanding of the different digital tools avalaible as well as some engagement with online projects that have used methods from the Digital Humanities in interesting ways.

Some of the main areas covered will include:

Data Visualisation

Digital Archives

Community-oriented ditigal tools

GIS and mapping

Open source

Creative Commons

Data mining

Scalar

Videographic criticism

Image analysis

 

Unit-3
Teaching Hours:20
Research Project
 

In this unit, students will use the theoretical and technical knowledge acquired to develop their individual research project proposals (these are the ones they will execute at our collaborative partner organisations such as Microsoft Research). The proposals will include an in-depth theoretical grounding, a literature review, methodology, key research questions, timeline, and proposed output. Along with a practice-based component, the output must also include plans towards the publication of a research paper. 

All research proposals will be developed through a continious process of peer-crits in order to avoid overlaps and duplications, and to develop a cohesive and expansive research inquiry in Digital Media & Technology.

Text Books And Reference Books:

Digital Humanities, Jeffrey Schnapp et all, MIT Press 2012

A Companion to Digital Humanities, Eds. Schreibman, Siemens, and Unsworth, Blackwell, 2004

Debates in the Digital Humanities, Ed. Matthew Gold, University of Minnesota Press, 2012

Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005

Making virtual worlds, Christopher Johanson, A new companion to digital humanities, Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, eds. 2015, p. 110-126 [available via MSU Libraries as an ebook, http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b11860138~S39a]

'Museum in a Box' Brings Interactive Museum Collections to Classrooms, Shaunacy Ferro, Mental Floss, 2018, http://mentalfloss.com/article/555762/museum-box-brings-interactive-museum-collectio ns-classrooms

Hearing eugenics, Sounding out!, 2016, https://soundstudiesblog.com/tag/vibrant-lives/

Crowdsourcing in the digital humanities, Melissa Terras, A New Companion to Digital Humanities, 2nd Edition, Edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth, 2016, p. 420-438 [available via MSU Libraries as an ebook, http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b11860138~S39a]

Building, Launching, and Running your Zooniverse Project: Best Practices for Engagement & Success (including Introduction, How to build a great project, The launch rush, In for the long haul), https://help.zooniverse.org/best-practices/

Essential Reading / Recommended Reading

Google Cultural Institute

NEH White Papers collection in Humanities Commons, https://hcommons.org/deposits/?tag=neh+white+papers

Digital Humanities Now, http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org

Digital Humanities Awards, http://dhawards.org

Digital Humanities Quarterly, http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, https://browzine.com/libraries/118/journals/55262/issues/current [available with MSU login]

DH Commons, http://dhcommons.org

Digital Humanities Q&A, http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/

HASTAC, https://www.hastac.org

Black New Yorkers, https://blacknewyorkers-nypl.org

Zooniverse - https://www.zooniverse.org/projects?discipline=history&page=1&status=liv e

Library of Congress - https://crowd.loc.gov/

Smithsonian - https://transcription.si.edu/browse?filter=all&sort=

New York Public Library Community Oral History Project - http://transcribe.oralhistory.nypl.org/

New York Public Library Space/Time Directory Surveyor - http://spacetime.nypl.org/surveyor/#/7516ddc0-a73c-0133-b645-0050568 6d14e

Newberry Library - https://publications.newberry.org/digital/mms-transcribe/index

Claude McKay's early poetry (TEI section), https://scalar.lehigh.edu/mckay/teixml-editions

Harlem Shadows, TEI edition, https://github.com/c-forster/harlem-shadows/blob/master/harlem-shadows.tei.xml

Neatline Demos, http://neatline.org/demos/

Evaluation Pattern

Evaluation will be on a continuous basis through class assignments, written submissions, reviews of literature, "making" with digital tools, and student presentations.