Faculty of Arts & Sciences

Instruction in Hindi-Urdu in topics not covered in the regular curriculum.

A complete first year introduction, in one term, to the lingua franca of the subcontinent in its "Hindustani" form. Students are introduced to both the Perso-Arabic and the Devanagari script systems, encompassing all four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Continuation of Hindi-Urdu 102; covers topics in advanced grammar; designed to improve proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

A survey of the popular literary genre including selections from poets such as Wali Dakkani, Siraj Aurangabadi, Mir Dard, Haidar Ali Atish, Mirza Ghalib, and others. Special attention to religious and mystical symbolism.

A course intended to raise levels of oral proficiency for advanced students and consolidate command over complex grammatical structures. By the end of the term, students will be expected to converse in a clearly participatory fashion, initiate, sustain and bring closure to a wide variety of communicative tasks using diverse strategies.

Continuation of Nepali 101a.

This course is designed to provide students with a more sophisticated knowledge of Nepali grammar. Students will also have an opportunity to use Nepali language for communication purposes and will be able to analyze more complex sentence types than the ones taught in the introductory course.

A reading course in Modern Nepali Literature, suitable for students who have at least three years of Nepali learning. This course is designed to help students understand some of the complex literary materials composed in modern Nepali language. The students will have an opportunity to read a wide variety of selected texts, understand the linguistic systems operative in those writings, and come up with their own informed understanding of them.

A reading course in Modern Nepali Literature, suitable for students who have at least three years of Nepali learning. This course is designed to help students understand some of the complex literary materials composed in modern Nepali language. The students will have an opportunity to read a wide variety of selected texts, understand the linguistic systems operative in those writings, and come up with their own informed understanding of them.

Investigates the impact of the various non-Nepali speaking groups (janajati)on Nepali literature, as well as their linguistic contributions.

Continuation of Pali 101a.

Continuation of Pali 102a.

Supervised reading of texts in Sanskrit not covered by regular courses of instruction.

Continuation of Sanskrit 101a.

Continuation of Sanskrit 102a.

Prose texts on ritual and early Indian philosophy are read and analyzed. Special attention is paid to the underlying method of establishing correlations between macro and microcosm in sacrificial proceedings.

This course will read selections of the "first kavya" in Epic Sanskrit. The objectives of the course include gaining speed and facility with the Epic poetic tradition, while focusing on the manner in which the text constitutes the figure of "the hero."

Selected readings from classical Sanskrit literary theory.

Topic to be announced.

Presents a history of Vedic texts and religion. Reading of pertinent texts from the period, 1200-500 BCE.

Supervised reading leading to a long term paper in a topic or topics not covered by regular courses of instruction.

This course examines concepts of personhood, community and culture in South Asia as expressed in contemporary film and literature. Works in Hindi-Urdu and in translation will be examined with emphasis on language as an index of cultural difference and of broad social shifts, notably the transformation of audiences from citizens to culture-consumers. Knowledge of Hindi-Urdu is not required. However, there will be a section for students with intermediate proficiency utilizing language materials.

This course aims at describing the methods and tools employed when critically editing Indian (mainly Sanskrit) texts, especially the use of stemma and modern computer-based editing and stemmatic programs, largely borrowed from biology.

Despite great efforts, scientists and activists have found themselves unable to bring about political changes that might reverse environmental degradation. This degradation has been caused by humans, but humans have not able to stop the processes behind it. South Asia is exceptionally vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation and critical to any global solutions to it. This seminar examines case studies of environmental politics in South Asia to explore fundamental questions about human agency and historical change, to understand how the environment is understood, why efforts to prevent its degradation have failed, and to explore interventions that might succeed.

What prompts a person with a family to pick up a gun and join a militia? What drives a democratic state to engage in indiscriminate violence against its own citizens? Why do people frequently see George Washington as a "freedom fighter" but insurgents in Kashmir as "terrorists"? This course will consider such questions in the context of religious and ethnic conflict in modern South Asia. Using case studies on Gujarat, Kashmir, Panjab, and Nagaland, we will discuss the historical trajectory and dialectical interplay between different forms of nationalism led by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Nagas in the colonial and post-colonial periods. Materials to be examined will be drawn from a wide range of sources, from theoretical texts and human rights reports to ethnographic accounts and films.

This course will examine imaginaries and understandings of class and cities in Indian cinema. How are struggles for earnings and mobility in the city - of migrants, workers, and middle classes - represented in Indian cinema? In what ways is the city viewed as a space of ethical deviations and compromises? How does class shape experiences of friendship, family, and erotic love? What visions of politics, justice, and hope arise in Indian cinema? The course will explore these questions in commercial, art, and documentary films (in Bengali, Hindi, and Marathi, with English subtitles), along with readings in history, anthropology, and cinema studies. Screenings will include films by Satyajit Ray, Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Yash Chopra, Muzaffar Ali, and Anand Patwardhan.

This course is an advanced introduction to the literature of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist thought in South Asia. Our initial goal is to trace the emergence and development of the Madhyamaka philosophical system as articulated by the school's founders and classical interpreters. The second part of the course will focus on the critical encounters of Madhyamaka writers with other South Asian philosophical traditions. Previous coursework in Buddhist studies or South Asian religions will be helpful, but not necessary.

Buddhist literary texts were an innovative force in the cultures of many parts of Asia. This course explores major Buddhist themes and genres in India, ranging from biographies of the Buddha, stories of his former lives, tales of magnificent exploits, to poetry and drama, and their continuing forms in other Asian literatures. While reading Asian Buddhist texts in translation, we will examine such questions as the role of language, the different functions of prose and verse, and the extent to which these texts are to be considered Buddhist.

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

Discusses the origin and development of the seminal Indian concepts of Rebirth and Karma as well as their eventual combination in the Upanishadic period. Follows some of their developments in the subsequent texts and beliefs of the past 2500 years

This course is designed to help students develop their skills in reading Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Parallel texts that exist in Sanskrit as well as in Tibetan and Chinese translations will be chosen. The course package will include selection from at least one Yogācāra text, while other Buddhist text traditions will also be represented in the reading materials.

An introduction to the oldest of the Dravidian languages of South India, Tamil holds official language status in Tamil Nadu, Singapore, and Sri Lanka. Tamil has one of the oldest uninterrupted literary traditions in the world, ranging from classical love poetry, devotional compositions and epics to the modern novel and short story. Students will be introduced to the Tamil script and to reading, writing, and speaking. Materials from popular culture will supplement modern teaching materials.

Continuation of Tamil 101. Focus will be on further developing reading, writing, and speaking skills. Students will read fables, newspapers, short stories, and other genres of literature including poetry. Tamil cinema and audiovisual materials presenting contemporary and traditional Tamil culture will be used as supplementary class material.

Continuation of Tamil 102. Covers topics of advanced grammar and is designed to further develop proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Texts include modern literature, classical poetry, devotional literature, epic literature, and selections from minor literary forms. Films and other audiovisual materials will be used as well.

This course introduces the basic grammatical structures of modern Thai, enabling students to read and produce simple, standard prose as well as engage in basic conversation by the end of the first year. Thai is taught with a concern for the cultural context in which this language is spoken and written.

A two-term continuation of the study of Thai at the intermediate level. Students build on acquired proficiency at the elementary level (or its equivalent) towards achieving more fluency in reading, speaking, writing, and listening comprehension of standard Thai, as well as in cultural-social skills. Introduces new vocabulary and grammar through communicative tasks and text readings, mainly using the situational-communicative methodology.

This course is designed to focus on reading and comprehension. Selected readings will be both for academic purposes and for pleasure. Students will read newspaper and magazine articles; short stories; and passages covering topics such as history, science, politics, medicine, technology and more. This reading course will help students become more proficient with nuanced/implied meanings, bolster vocabulary and acquire familiarity with various professional jargon.

A introductory course designed for students with no background in classical Tibetan. Students begin with the Tibetan script, its standard transliteration into Roman characters, and pronunciation before proceeding to the basics of Tibetan grammar. After mastering a foundational vocabulary, students begin translating simple Tibetan texts.

An intermediate classical Tibetan course emphasizing reading and translation of various Tibetan texts covering different genres, such as religious history, biography of Tibetan masters and folk literature writings. Please check the course website for the most updated information.

An introduction to spoken standard Central Tibetan: its phonology and basic grammar and syntactic structures - with drill sessions.

This course will cover more complex grammatical and syntactic structures of spoken standard Central Tibetan - with drill sessions.

This course will examine the geography of Bod and Bod chen po, the division of its territories, and a variety of key place-names from an historical perspective. This will be a seminar-cum-reading course using Tibetan (and some Chinese) sources from the ninth to the nineteenth century.

This course introduces two histories of Tibet. The first history begins from the remote past, covering the evolution of political, religious and ideological institutions on the Tibetan plateau from the 7th century until the present. The second history is that of the more recent past, when the first history was used, misused or abused in the scholarly domain and beyond. The close intermingling of these two histories - and the frequent pretense of one as the other - makes "Tibet" uniquely useful in our understanding the very nature of the humanistic inquiry that we call history. Instead of looking at the Tibetan plateau as a self-sufficient unit of historical analysis, this course situates the Tibetan plateau between China, India, Central Asia, Western Asia and the "West." Specifically, students will be introduced to themes such as: the changing domains of the Tibetan cultural areas; Buddhism's historical and historiographical conquests of Tibet; the usefulness of the vocabulary "Golden" as well as "Dark" ages in linear historical narratives; the process of consecration of historical persons such as Songtsen Gampo and the Dalai Lamas; the subjugation of and resistence to Tibet as a part of "Chinese" history; the highly contextual representations of Tibet and Tibetan history. No prior knowledge is required.

In this course, we will be reading different kinds of inscriptions from the eighth to the ninth century. Special attention will be given to several of these, including the famous Sino-Tibetan inscription of 822-3.

An intermediate to advanced reading class in Tibetan religious literature. The topic in Spring 2013 is Tibetan historiography. We will read several outstanding works that recount the past, including histories of the world, of Buddhism, of specific traditions, and of specific monasteries and places. Each present disparate notions of the past and its status vis-a-vis the present, how knowledge should be constituted and organized, how various discursive and poetic forms can effect that presentation, what kinds of things are most important to recount, and what is thereby accomplished.