Women of India: Lives
and Literatures course homepage
for Fall, 2008
(posted August 8, 2008 and subject to a few modifications)
Prerequisite: Writing 1 class and a CS or CH class
In this study of both life and literature, we will start by familiarizing ourselves with one of India’s most influential cultural forces, Hinduism, and then learn about some major historical events that shaped the nation. Later we will think about traditional expectations about women’s lives and about how today’s women are confronting and modifying cultural traditions. We will think about how global economic flows play a role in this process too, acknowledging and looking closely at a Western consumerist invasion of sorts and the paths this may take in the future. We will read literature and film alongside of feminist theory, sociology and history and address the uneasy relationship between theory, literary narrative and political practice.
This course fulfills the Global Awareness (G) requirement in the University Studies Program. Thus it immerses students in a perspective that is different from their own. It challenges assumptions about the world and its operation, and allows students to explore possible alternative viewpoints from other societies, cultural and religious traditions, or geopolitical regions. India is just as diverse as Europe or more so. Thus it is impossible to “cover” the many diverse cultures of India in a semester, but this course will give you a solid introduction. Throughout the course I will encourage you to make correlations between American culture and the culture of India. For instance, in both cultures male dominance is assumed, which seriously harms both men’s and women’s potential. Our goal as a class will be to form a more complex understanding of the ways Indian women have faced challenges and to undestand the concerns women have in common in the midst of wide disparities. As US citizens who are exposed to US media, we more likely to classify women living in the developing world as oppressed victims: while we learn about oppressive circumstances we also must attend to the influence or power Indian women have had in particular contexts.
The format will include lecture and discussion; it is best to take notes during both.
A Matter of Time by Shashi Deshpande
The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali
Articles, most of which are available as e-copies in Coe online reserve.
(Be sure to print out online reserve articles & bring them to class for discussion.)
and one of these books
Karukku by Bama, Autobiography of a Sex Worker by Nalini Jameela, or
Why I am Not a Hindu by Kancha Ilaiah
Recommended:
(These will also be available at Coe Reserve desk.)
This class does require significant student involvement and time outside
the classroom. Expect to spend lots of time on the reading. Please record your
reaction to ideas by writing small notes in the margins next to those ideas.
Then as you re-skim the article, use your highlighter sparingly: embolden the
five most important points in the article, for instance.
If you are reading fiction, look for key indications of character or mark turning points in the plot. Afterwards, try to summarize what possible messages are hinted at by the story and also consider the diction, point of view, and narrative sequence and what they add to the reading experience.
If I modify the
schedule, I will give you advance notice.
Historical and religious foundations
T Aug 26 Course overview and goals. Maps & chronology and Thursday’s hand out distributed. Screening of short film From Indus to Independence.
Th Aug 28 Read the hand out “Women in South Asia” by Barbara N. Ramusack with special emphasis on p. 41-73. I’ll outline women’s roles in creating the nation of India. “Partial screening of Gandhi (1982).
T Sept 2 India from 1947 through the 90s: read Chapters 8 and 9 from A Concise History of India by Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf (print out the pages from electronic reserve, allow plenty of time to read and absorb).
Written Assignment Due: draw on the reading to create a two-page bullet list of chronological events revealing internal divisions within the new nation-state of India. Discussion of the concept of Orientalism in latter half of class (excerpt from Edward Said’s Orientalism will be passed out in class).
Sign up for Thursday refreshments list (optional).
Th Sept 4 An important aside: Understanding whiteness and the common traps Western white women fall into when studying non-Western women.
Read p. 107-120 of “Whiteness and the Politics of Location” by Raka Shome (if you have time, skim p. 121-127) and also absorb the main points of “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” by Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1997).
Be prepared to share what you regard are significant quotations from the articles.
T Sept. 9 Read p. 26-36, 54-67,117-26 from The Hindu Mind by Bansi Pandit and p. 3-12 and 32-58 of Darsan by Diana Eck. (Note that the e-reserve selection by Pandit contains more pages than the pages assigned – going on is optional.)
Th Sept. 11 Goddesses in Hindu mythology: read the story of Sita and the story of Draupadi from Vyasa’s Mahabarata as retold by R.K. Narayan in Gods, Demons and Others. (Hand-outs.) To consider: the accounts of Draupadi and Sita you have read are written by men. How do you imagine women might tell the stories of these two goddesses differently to one another?
(Start reading the novel A Matter of Time.)
T Sept. 16 Topics: poverty and caste. Read the short piece “Enduring Stereotypes about Asia: India’s Caste System” by Joe Elder.
Grad students: read & report on “Introduction” from Gender and Caste by Anupama Rao.
Expectations of Daughters, Wives and Mothers
Th Sept. 18 Read M. Chaudhuri’s Introduction to Feminism in India (a book I highly recommended - a great collection of essays). I will also speak about another essay from that book, Suma Chitnis’ “Feminism: Indian Ethos and Indian Connections” by Suma Chitnis. The graduate students will give a quick overview of globalization, summarizing two chapters from Manfred Steger’s Globalization: A Very Short Introduction and the article “Outsourcing Identities” by Divya McMillin.
T Sept. 23 “Rethinking the Requirements: of Marriage and Motherhood” by Jyoti Puri (from Woman, Body, Desire 1999). Grad students will critique the speculative psychology offered by well-known writer Ashis Nandy in “Woman vs. Womanliness in India: an essay in Cultural and Political Psychology.”
Topic: marriage negotiations.
Th Sept. 25 The first half of the novel A Matter of Time by Shashi Deshpande.
Special event: The Creative Writing and English Department has funded a visit from Salman Rushdie. He will speak at 5pm on Thursday in the A&S Auditorium, and will also be at a Breakfast Q & A on Friday morning 9:30-11 at the Albany County Public Library.
T Sept. 30 “The Campaign Against Dowry” p. 115-126 from Radha Kumar’s The History of Doing. Discussion of historical devaluation of daughters. Lecture and discussion contextualizing dowry death, and this crime placed side by side with wife-battering in America.
Grad students: reading to be announced.
Th Oct. 2
A Matter of Time to end.
Special event: Diwali, a celebration of light, in the Union Ballroom, Saturday, October 4 organized by Milaap, UW’s India Student Association
T Oct 7 Exam 1 (It will cover maps, historical events, and other concepts. It will probably consist mostly of questions that you will answer in one sentence. There will also be a section of questions requiring a paragraph of explanation.)
Th Oct 9 Screening of Deepa Mehta’s film Fire (which became a rallying point and dialogue starter about lesbian relationships across India).
Thurs Oct 11 A brief paragraph describing your comparative essay topic or research topic is due. Introduction and “Rekha and Dolly” from Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India by Maya Sharma. Discussion. Hand-out: Characteristics of Bollywood films.
T Oct. 14 There is no reading due this week, but there’s a heavy reading assignment for Oct. 21, so get a head start. Screening of film to be announced.
Oct 16 Screening of film continued.
Living as a minority group in India: challenges faced by Muslim citizens
T Oct. 21 Read “The Three Partitions of 1947” by Gyanendra Pandey for background on Partition, and the chapters “Beginnings” (3-20) and “Women” (85-136) from Urvashi Butalia’s book on Partition The Other Side of Silence (hand-out)
Th Oct. 23 Guest lecture on partition by MIT historian Dr. Haimanti Roy.
Special event: come hear Dr. Roy’s Brown Bag lecture on “Partition and its Aftereffects” in the Senate Chambers Room at 12:30 pm.
T Oct. 28 Background: Islam 101. Read the chapters of The Muslim Next Door assigned to your last name (this will have been announced in class.)
Come prepared to teach your fellow students about the section you read, giving them key insights to write down.
Th Oct. 30 Lecture: The landmark Shahbano alimony case, and contemporary conditions of Muslim women in India.
(My lecture is drawn partly from Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India by Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon. Delhi: Oxford UP, 2004..)
Nationalism and the Bodies of Women
T Nov. 4 *Reading by Angana Chatterji. Discussion and partial screening of Rakesh Sharma’s documentary The Final Solution (2002).
Th Nov. 6 Essays due. Bollywood: the good, the bad, the beautiful. Discussion of the movie you viewed earlier and clips from more recent blockbusters. Instructions on group presentations.
T Nov. 11 A-L read Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s “The Subject of Sati: Pain and Death in the Contemporary Discourse” from Real and Imagined Women (1993; e-reserve). M-Z read Lata Mani’s “Contentious Traditions” (hand-out). (Sunder Rajan proposes that the victim/agent binarism that has characterized much of the debate about sati might be altered by developing the idea that a woman’s pain constitutes part of her subjecthood as an agent. Mani’s essay shows the manipulation of religious tradition to serve legal aims of the ruling elite regarding sati, and this manipulation applies to many other contexts as well.)
Th Nov. 13 Discussion of Masculinities. Partial screening of When Four Friends Meet by Rahul Roy.
Whose Feminism? bringing together discourse about Gender, Caste, Class, and Nation
T Nov. 18 Read “Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender” by Tejeswini Niranjana and Susie Tharu (Gender and Politics in India ed. N. Menon, 1999). I will also summarize Kishwar’s early essay “Why I am not a Feminist.”
Th Nov. 20 Group Presentation on Autobiography of a Sex Worker.
T Nov. 25 Screening of When Women Unite, an excellent documentary on the village women in Andhra Pradesh (described in the article you just read) who fought to stop government-subsidized alcohol (arrack) from overwhelming their male partners and by extension the whole family’s livelihood and well being.
Th Nov 27 Thanksgiving break!
T Dec. 2 Group Presentation on Why I am Not a Hindu by Kancha Ilaiah
I will give tips on studying for the exam (which will have a question section and an in-class essay, and I will give out the take-home essay prompt).
Th Dec. 4 Group Presentation on Karukku by Bama.
T Dec. 9 at 10:15 am
Final Exam
Please note: the take-home essay is not due until Thursday, December 12 at 5pm and can be sent via email.