My teaching interests include South Asian civilizational history as well as empire, colonialism and decolonisation. I am especially invested in teaching the intertwined histories of race, labour, migration, and capitalism–an interest I have developed into the freshman humanities seminar 'Caste, Race and Equality'. Organised around the conceptual premise of 'equality' and its evolution thereof in eighteenth-century Europe and beyond, the course examines the differences and similarities between race and caste as systems of human hierarchy, oppression, and exploitative labor.
My survey courses on South Asia encompass Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic regimes in South Asia and I include lots of literary and visual sources in my syllabi, hoping that a combination of secondary scholarship and primary sources will facilitate students in immersing themselves in the multiple languages, religions, and regions of South Asia. I also include materials on environmental and oceanic histories so that students get a sense of the diverse mobilities and interconnections that characterised South Asia before the late eighteenth century.
My main research and teaching interest is Modern South Asia, and I teach a class on the late colonial and early postcolonial periods through a history of leadership and political organisation. This course, originally offered by Professor Nita Kumar at the Claremont Colleges, is called 'Makers of Modern India and Pakistan'. My version of this course focuses on the events that led up to both independence as well as the Partition of 1947. The course includes biographical appraisals of figures like Gandhi, Ambedkar, Nehru, Jinnah, Iqbal, Tagore, E.V. Ramasamy, Subhash Chandra Bose, Fatima Jinnah, Sarojini Naidu, Jogendranath Mondal, and others, to approach the major questions of South Asian history. The syllabus covers problems of representation, minority politics, and sectarian conflict, and also unity, freedom, development, and equality.
I teach a number of courses on gender and sexuality. My favourite syllabus is provocatively titled 'Can Women Think?' Needless to say, it should have been rephrased as 'Were Women Allowed to Think?' or 'Of course, Women were Thinking, but Were they Allowed to Contribute to Thought?' This course traces the figure of the female intellectual in South Asia, from antiquity to the mid twentieth century.
makers of modern india and pakistan
Sex and censorship in south asia
gender and history in south asia
caste, race and equality
can women think? the female intellectual in south asia
The other woman: Sexual deviancy in south asia