2016-2017
GATEWAY COURSES
HIS-101 | European History from Renaissance to Revolution
Rudrangshu Mukherjee
(Spring, annually)
HIS-201 | Ancient India
Nayanjot Lahiri
(Monsoon annually; was Kelly HIS 201 in Monsoon 2015; till the academic year 2017-2018)
HIS-202 | Medieval India
Pratyay Nath
(Monsoon annually; was Mukherjee HIS 202 in Monsoon 2015; till the academic year 2017-2018)
HIS-203 | Modern India
Mahesh Rangarajan/ Rudrangshu Mukherjee
(Spring annually; was HIS-201 Spring 2016; till the academic year 2017-2018)
CRTICIAL THINKING SEMINAR
CT 218 | Animal Histories
Mahesh Rangarajan
(Cross-listed with Environmental Studies in Monsoon 2016; Monsoon 2017; cross-listed with Environmental Studies and History in Monsoon 2018)
It is impossible to disentangle the way we look at animals from how we look at people. Mainly but not wholly focused on the modern world, the paper examines the way animal-human relations have changed over time. The paper ranges over hunting and museums, animal science and empire, nation making and nature protection, gender and nature. The ethical and political issue of how we define animals is critical to how we define the human condition in our times.
CT 212 | Critical Concepts in Islam
Muhammad Ali Khan
(Monsoon 2016; Monsoon 2017, Monsoon 2019)
This course will offer students the chance to tackle individual concepts within Islam and then go into an in-depth analysis of their origins, changes in meaning and their relevance to the everyday lives of Muslims by using a longue durée approach. Furthermore, there will be a constant effort to underscore how these issues remain deeply relevant today and thereby introduce students to currents debates as well.
CT-215 | A History of the Future: Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
Simon Green
(Monsoon 2016)
With the passing of the Communist era, it is becoming ever clearer that Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, rather than Marx’s Capital, represents the truly prophetic work of nineteenth-century political sociology. This course invites students to consider why Tocqueville chose the United States, not Europe, as his model for the future, how he was able to predict developments in the advanced societies so accurately and the degree to which his insights remain applicable to the wider world today. (Visiting faculty; not repeated).
CT-112 | Environmental History
Mahesh Rangarajan
(Spring 2016, Spring 2017)
CT-125 | War in History
Pratyay Nath
(Spring 2017)
This Critical Thinking Seminar provides a historical perspective on the world of war. The course is divided into three parts. The first part is a historical survey. It traces the evolution of warfare in different parts of the world since the prehistoric times till recent decades. The second part takes the investigation away from combat and military technology. In this part, we delve into the world of military organisation and explore the role of military labour, war-animals, and military logistics. The third part of the course leads us towards the interfaces between war, culture, and society. Here, we unravel the role of gender in warfare, the politics of representation of military conflict as well as issues like military ethics, war propaganda, anti-war protest, war memory, and war trauma.
CT-128 | History, Memory, Memorialization
Nayanjot Lahiri
(previously titled ‘History and Memory across Asia’; cross-listed as 200-level History Elective in Spring 2017, Spring 2018)
The course aims to analyze the many meanings that make history, memory and memorialization intelligible. What is history? How does memory work? Is memorialization selective or inclusive? These are some of the questions that will be examined through an exploration of iconic persona and phenomena. On the one hand, three famous personalities will be explored – Alexander the Great, Emperor Ashoka and Mahatma Gandhi – in order to understand the elements that form the title of this course. On the other hand, the phenomena of war will be examined ranging from Massada in the Middle East to the American-Vietnam War in Southeast Asia in order to explore the contested terrain of history and memory. Apart from reading the works of historians, the course will involve analysing excerpts from literature and films.
READING COURSES
HIS-301 | Reading History
Nayanjot Lahiri/ Rudrangshu Mukherjee
(Spring 2017)
This course seeks to impart a sense of the building blocks of the discipline of history, and of the various ways in which these have been perceived and used. What ideas of the past can be seen from antiquity till the present? How have the concerns of history changed? What constitute the facts of history and how are these ascertained? What constitute the protocols of historical discourse? These are questions that will be examined with reference to the works of various historians within and outside academia.
HIS-302 | Reading Archaeology
Gwen Kelly
(Spring 2016, Spring 2017; will not be offered again)
ELECTIVES
200 LEVEL
HIS-211 | French Revolution (1789-1799): Ten Years that Changed the World
Laurence Gautier
(Cross-listed with Political Science as POL 210 in Summer 2017)
Few events have had as powerful an impact as the French Revolution. More than two hundred years after it ‘ended’, the ‘Great Revolution’ continues to stir passions and controversies. While the revolutionaries’ mantra ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ still captures the imagination of many, others see in Terror and the guillotine symbols of revolutionary fanaticism. Even among historians, the Revolution remains a hotly debated issue. Was it a ‘bourgeois revolution’, which marked the emergence of capitalism? Was it a liberal revolution which sunk into anarchy? or did it contain, from its very beginning, the seeds of totalitarianism? To what extent did its ‘universal’ principles include slaves, women or ‘internal others’? This course will explore the many fascinating aspects of this ‘torrent’ of events, from the proclamation of universal human rights to the suppression of absolute monarchy, from the abolition of slavery to the Declaration of the rights of women. It will highlight the global resonance of this revolution, which, in many ways, shaped the world we still live in.
300 LEVEL
HIS-301 | Revolt of 1857
Rudrangshu Mukherjee
(Monsoon 2016)
In this course students will deal with the events, the sources, the historiography and the events of the uprising.
HIS-302 | World Hegemon: Britain in Comparative Perspective, c. 1832-1914
Simon Green
(Monsoon 2016, will not be offered again)
Victorian Britain was the world's greatest power since Roman times. Its population quadrupled. It became, and long remained, the leading industrial power. It dominated international trade. It acquired an empire covering one-quarter of the world's surface. This course explains how that happened and what its consequences were, both for Britain and the rest of the world, down to the outbreak of the first World War.
HIS-303 | Politics and Society in India, 1937-77
Mahesh Rangarajan
(Cross-listed with Political Science as POL 304-01 in Monsoon 2016 and Monsoon 2019)
The era of Congress dominance, from the victory in most provinces in the 1937 provincial elections to its first defeat in a general election in 1977. The course spans an era though freedom, Partition and constitution making to the emergence of the parliamentary system and the early years of independent India. Socio-political and economic changes in India are viewed in relation to the changing role of the republic in Asia and the world.
HIS 304 | Indigenous Histories
Gwen Kelly
(Cross-listed with Sociology/ Anthropology as SOA 303-01 in Monsoon 2016; will not be offered again)
This course is focused on ‘indigenous peoples’ — known in India as ‘tribals’ — communities who are often thought of as outside mainstream society, isolated, ‘backward’, and perhaps anachronistic remnants of ages past. Recent interdisciplinary work in History and Anthropology has focused on understanding the specific histories of indigenous and ‘tribal’ communities, to break out of the timeless mold, and understand how and why they have existed alongside states and empires, and continue to co-exist within and alongside nation-states. In order to do this, we explore a variety of case studies in indigenous histories from all over the world including South Asia, North America, Hawaii, Africa and Australia.
HIS 306 | Introduction to the Mughals
Pratyay Nath
(formerly titled ‘Unpacking the Mughal World’; Spring 2017)
Mughal emperors believed that they are the divinely-mandated rulers of the entire universe. This reflected in their imperial titles like Jahangir (Conqueror of the World), Shah Jahan (King of the World), and Alamgir (Conqueror of the Universe). However, how much power did they actually wield? How did they use paintings and built spaces to articulate their changing visions of power? What role did war, diplomacy, ideology, and religion play in imperial expansion? Did the ghost of their Central Asian past haunt the empire in South Asia? How did the empire legitimise its rule, discipline its elite, and create its fabled riches? What kind of ideals of masculinity animated Mughal courtly etiquette and how much agency did Mughal women have? How did various South Asian communities perceive and respond to Mughal imperial expansion? What role did Mughal patronage play in the development of various South Asian languages? Why did such a huge and prosperous empire come crashing down in the eighteenth century? By way of engaging with these questions, the present course introduces students to the history of the Mughal Empire.
HIS 307 | Artefacts and Texts: Understanding the Relationship of History and Archaeology
Nayanjot Lahiri
(Spring 2017, cancelled)
This course will look at the possibilities and challenges involved in the dialogue between material culture and writing in reconstructing the pasts of various societies, from the ancient to the modern. In which ways are artefacts and texts different, yet similar? How does this impact the relationship between history and archaeology? How have places mentioned in Classical texts been identified on the ground? Can the study of religions like Buddhism and Islam, which are grounded in textual traditions, be enriched through the archaeology of their practices? The case studies will look at these themes and at a few others that concern Roman Pompeii, the early modern movements of people, and modern war remembrance.
HIS 308 | History of South India, from Ancient to Early Modern
Gwen Kelly
(Spring 2017; will not be offered again)
Southern India from the Ancient period to the Early Modern has its own unique cultures, languages, texts, and history, distinct but not disconnected, from North India. While most courses in Indian history focus primarily on the North, this course will instead explore the distinct cultural and historical traditions, and the distinct sources of South Indian history, including literary and oral traditions of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, from the Ancient and Medieval periods, and continue through the period of the early colonial encounters with the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Danes. (A-year, repeatable)
400 LEVEL
HIS-403 | State, Society and Ecology in South Asia, 1800-2000
Mahesh Rangarajan
(Spring 2017, Spring 2018)
The course links together different facets of state building socio-cultural and economic transformation and ecological change over a two century period. It will contrast and compare different regions in the early and later period of colonial rule and the early phase of independence. While examining the implications of the shifts under Company and then Crown rule, it also seeks to place South Asia in the wider context of the Asian mainland and the Indian Ocean. Technical and even more so legal changes had major implications for the way land and water, forests and animals, transport routes and seas were controlled and used, conserved or abused.
More often than not, what was at stake were not only competing claims on resources but differing ideas of what nature did or did not mean for different actors. Of special interest is the 20th century when there were intense debates on the future course of development and the actual trajectories after the mid twentieth century. There is a rich vein of fresh work on the politics of nature not only in India, but Nepal, Burma and Sri Lanka. The city, as much as the country, forest, coast, and river, is an arena of contest and remaking.
South Asia is not only home to over a billion and half people, but also more than one in ten mammals and over 30,000 flowering plants. The region's recent emergence as a hub of economic growth has environmental implications both within and without the sub-continent. How far present day changes are an unmaking of the ecological fabric or its re-naturing is an ever present question.
INDEPENDENT STUDY MODULES
HIS-399-1 | War and Empire in Early Modern Europe, 1477-1714
Pratyay Nath
(Monsoon 2016)
The purpose of this reading course is to examine the social, economic, political, and cultural factors that influenced state actors during the early modern period in Western and Central Europe. The course explores the inter-relationships between royal powers and the authority of religious institutions. We will study Great Power Politics and the dynamics that went behind maintaining the balance of power in Europe. Some of these include royal marriages, personal unions, vassalages, and feudal control structures. We will also examine the maintenance of political stability within the realms through religious, royal, and other social institutions. The course will also explore imperial territorial expansion in and outside Europe. Apart from analyzing existing rivalries and overlapping claims on the continent,we will also examine warfare and territorial expansion in the New World. Colonization and the resulting increase in trade for European colonial powers will be studied too.
CROSS LISTED COURSES FROM OTHER DEPARTMENTS
HIS -210 | South Asian Security and Diplomatic History
Rudra Chaudhuri
(Monsoon 2016; IR course cross-listed with History)
Course Description: Unavailable
HIS 305/IR-201-01 | International History of the Twentieth Century
Srinath Raghavan
(Monsoon 2016; IR course cross-listed with History)
This course will chart and analyse the transformation of the international and global politics over the long twentieth century. It will focus on events and processes from the late nineteenth century to the present, covering the two world wars and the cold war, the fall and rise of global capitalism, revolutions and decolonization, international institutions and economic development, ideologies and religion, new discourses of neoliberalism and human rights.