About the Course

Fall 2003: Global Awareness:

The Wonder That is India

This Global Awareness course offers a survey of North-Indian cultures based on literature and arts of the region. It will be followed by a three-week trip to the locales that form the focus of our study and reconvene for the spring semester to conclude with students presenting their finished research projects to the Agnes Scott community.

Considering the size and diversity of a country like India, the area of concentration is limited to Central and North India which includes major sites of literary and anthropological interest like Amritsar, Simla, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Ajmer, Pushkar, Lucknow, Ayodhya, Allahabad, Benaras (now Varanasi), and Khajaraho. Between them, the named places circumscribe the high points of literary, cultural, and spiritual practice and excellence for the five major religious traditions of India—Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Muslim, and Sikh. The area has also exercised tremendous political influence on the sub-continent as a whole. Delhi itself has witnessed the rise and fall of many dynasties, and under the British was a crucial symbol of Imperial privilege and power. The ruins of Indraprastha, fabled capital of the Pandavas in the religious epic The Mahabharata , may still be seen in the precincts of its Purana Qila . But the name of each city mentioned here conjures up the most intriguing legends and historical recollections some of which we shall acquaint ourselves with during the course of the semester.

We will use texts from older traditions as well as post-imperial literatures covering major
literary genres, journalism, and non-fiction, supplemented by multimedia resources including film, videotape, and audio recordings. The emphasis would be to explore, among other subjects and topics, religions and philosophies of India, patterns of political expediency and control, epic sagas and the peoples' tradition of poetry, devotional hymns and sufi songs, festivals, rites, and rituals, the role of migrations and relocations in creating the character of the place as we know it today, the dynamics of dominance and marginalization, both as it exists today and as it manifests itself in the residue and deposits of the various Empires that flourished and faded in the sub-continent of India over the last two thousand years, gender roles, expectations, and relationships, the institutions of dowry, marriage, divorce, and sati, social mores pertaining to children and older people, ethnic pride, religious conflicts, and castism, the dominant themes and motifs of diverse art and architecture styles, and the culture of classical dance and music. Students are expected to develop projects for independent research. They will be encouraged to think critically about various forms of learning and receptivity, script-based, sensory, experiential, and to reflect upon the similarities and differences between them with a view to enlarging their field of sympathy and understanding to unfamiliar parts of the world.