LITR2518 LITERARY CULTURES IN HISTORY: THE MANY LANGUAGES OF SOUTH ASIA Spring 2013-2014 Instructor Room No. Office Hours Email Telephone Secretary/TA TA Office Hours Course URL (if any) Taimoor Shahid 236 Acad Block TBA COURSE DESCRIPTION The aim of this course is four-fold: one, to inculcate in students an appreciation of the variety of wonderful literary traditions in South Asia and their rich internal diversity, with a focus on North India; two, to introduce students to the fundamental question of literary historiography: why should we study languages and their literature and write their histories; three, to acquaint students with how to read and write the history of languages and literatures of this region with its complex multilingual past; four, to teach students critical engagement with scholarship. Students will read exciting contemporary scholarship on literatures in Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Sindhi, English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, and others from Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (2003), the most important collection of essays on fifteen literary cultures from South Asia. Written by a variety of scholars with different methodological foci, this comparative reading will introduce students to the different ways histories of languages and literary cultures can, and need to be written, and to their strengths and weaknesses. In addition to LCH, students will read other crucial interventions in the study of language and literary cultures, such as Farina Mir s monograph on Punjabi popular literature: The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab (UC Press, 2010). This survey of various literary traditions will be complemented by using the Hindi-Urdu world as a case study for literary historiography. Students will read various recent works on the literary cultures of these worlds, and see where this scholarship is headed: how it goes beyond the questions of origin and difference between Hindi and Urdu; complicates the use of these blanket labels; and examines the premodern tradition in detail for a better postcolonial understanding of this complex literary world. Some key questions that will guide this comparative study include: What are literary cultures and in what ways do they come into being? What are the relationships of literary cultures to their broader social and political contexts? How do literary cultures constitute and understand themselves, and how
do we understand them from the outside? How and why do literary cultures change over time and in what ways do historical transformations like colonialism and nationalism affect them? COURSE EVALUATION Class Participation: 20% (5% Attendance, 15% Discussion) The class discussion should indicate a familiarity with the readings assigned for the class this means completing the readings prior to the session. Attendance, though 5% of the grade, is taken seriously students will be penalized for more than three absences during the semester. Two Critical Responses: 30% Every week selected students will respond to the assigned readings by writing a double-spaced four page critical analysis of the reading, presenting a summary of this response in class. The response will be guided by the following areas of inquiry: (a) What is the argument? What do we learn from the reading? (b) What is the methodology/archive/ evidence used by the author(s)? What is the author s object of inquiry and how is it chosen? (c) Why is the author arguing what he is? What is at stake? (d) How convincing is the argument and why; if it is weak, why? What other scholarship supports or problematizes the argument? These responses are to be submitted two days before class so that all students have the opportunity to read them prior to class. All students must sign up in the first week for two sessions of their liking. Weekly Responses to Readings: 15% When not presenting the critical responses, students will provide three short responses (comments, questions, problems) to the weekly readings. This submission will be half a page to a page long. These responses are to be submitted before the class. Wrap-up Paper: 5% In this two-page long paper students will have the opportunity to take stock of and reflect on the course. This reflection could be an overview of what the student took from the course; an exploration of a particular theme, or a response to some key issues and questions discussed in class. It will also include a critique of the course. The last class will be based on these student reflections that are to be submitted two days prior to class so that all students have the opportunity to read each other s responses. Final Essay: 30% Students will have the option to write two kinds of essays. One, an article that reviews three books (or commensurate number of articles) in 10-15 pages. The review will follow the lines of the Critical Responses outlined previously. Greater weight will be put to critical engagement with the sources, and establishing critical connections between selected works. Two, a research paper (10-15 pages) on the subject of the student s liking, but which has been discussed in advance with the instructor.
Note on readings: All readings will be in the reading package and/or uploaded online. COURSE SCHEDULE Week 1: Overview of Class (Jan 14 classes shifted to April 29) Week 2: South Asian Literatures and their Histories Sheldon, Pollock. 2003. Introduction. In Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (LCH), edited by Sheldon Pollock. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1-39. Dimock, Edward C., Edwin Gerow, C.M. Naim, A.K. Ramanujan, Gordon Roadarmel, and J.A.B. Van Buitenen. 1978. Literatures of India: An Introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Selections. Kaviraj, Sudipta 1992b. Writing, Speaking, Being: Language and the Historical Formation of Identities in India. In Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam and Dietmar Rothermund, eds., Nationalstaat und Sprachkonflickt in Sudund Sudostasien. Stuttgart: Steiner, pp. 25-65. Week 3: Globalizing Literary Culture I: Sanskrit Sheldon Pollock. 2003. Sanskrit Literary Culture from the Inside Out. In LCH, pp. 39-131. Sheldon Pollock. 2006. Introduction, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Week 4: Globalizing Literary Culture II: Persian Muzaffar Alam. 2003. The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan. In LCH, pp. 131-198. Shamsur Rehman Faruqi. 2004. A Stranger in the City: The Poetics of Sabk-e Hindi. Annual of Urdu Studies 19: 1-93. Week 5: Globalizing Literary Culture III: English Vinay Dharwadker: 2003. The Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature. In LCH, pp. 199-270. N.B. We will dedicate one lecture of Week 5 to English, and start the next module on Borderlands from the second lecture of the week.
Week 6: The Centrality of Borderlands: Bengali, Gujarati, and Sindhi Sudipta Kaviraj. 2003. The Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal. In LCH, pp. 503-566. d Hubert, Thibaut. 2013. Pirates, Poets and Merchants: Bengali Language and Literature in Seventeenth Century Mrauk-U. In Culture and Circulation: Mobility and Diversity in Premodern Indian Literature, edited by Thomas De Bruijn and Allison Busch. Leiden: Brill. Sitamshu Yashachandra. 2003. From Hemachandra to Hind Svarāj: Region and Power in Gujarati Literary Culture. In LCH, pp. 567-611. Ali S. Asani. 2003. At the Crossroads of Indic and Iranian Civilizations: Sindhi Literary Culture. In LCH, pp. 612-648. Week 7: Literature in Southern Locales I: Tamil and Kannada Norman Cutler. 2003. Three Moments in the Genealogy of Tamil Literary Culture. In LCH, pp. 271-323. D. R. Nagaraj. 2003. Critical Tensions in the History of Kannada Literary Culture. In LCH, pp. 323-382. Week 8: Literature in Southern Locales II: Telugu and Malyalam Velchuru Narayana Rao. 2003. Multiple Literary Cultures in Telugu: Court, Temple, and Public. In LCH, pp. 383-436. Mitchell, Lisa 2005. Parallel Languages, Parallel Cultures: Language as a New Foundation for the Reorganization of Knowledge and Practice in Southern India. Indian Economic and Social History Review 42(4): 445-67. Mitchell, Lisa 2006. Making the Local Foreign: Shared Language and History in Southern India. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16(2):229 48. Rich Freeman. Genre and Society: The Literary Culture of Premodern Kerala. In LCH, pp. 437-502. Week 9: Marginal Traditions: Punjabi Farina Mir. 2010. The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press. Week 10: Buddhist Cultures and South Asian Literatures: Pali, Sinhala, and Tibetan Steven Collins. 2003. What is Literature in Pali? In LCH, pp. 649-688
Charles Hallisey. 2003. Works and Persons in Sinhala Literary Culture. In LCH, pp. 689-746. Matthew T. Kapstein. 2003. The Indian Literary Identity in Tibet. In LCH, pp. 747-804. Week 11: The Twinned Histories of Urdu and Hindi I: Postcolonioal Hindi, Urdu Shamsur Rehman Faruqi. 2003. A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 1: Naming and Placing a Literary Culture. In LCH, pp. 805-863. Stuart McGregor. 2003. The Progress of Hindi, Part 1: The Development of a Transregional Idiom. In LCH, pp. 912-957. Frances Pritchett. 2003. A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 2: Histories, Performances, and Masters. In LCH, pp. 864-911. Harish Trivedi. 2003. The Progress of Hindi, Part 2: Hindi and the Nation. In LCH, pp. 958-1022. Week 12: The Twinned Histories of Urdu and Hindi II: Brajbhasha and Awadhi Busch, Allison. 2010b. Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal Court. Modern Asian Studies 44(2): 267-309. Busch, Allison. 2012. The Anxiety of Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in the Hindi/Riti Tradition. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24:2, 45-59. Busch, Allison. 2011. Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India. New York: Oxford University Press. Introduction, and Chapter 1. de Bruijn, Thomas. 2010. Dialogism in a Medieval Genre: The Case of the Avadhi Epics In Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture, edited by Francesca Orsini. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. Behl, Aditya. 2012. Love s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379-1545. New York: Oxford University Press. Introduction, and Epilogue. Week 13: The Twinned Histories of Urdu and Hindi III: Rekhtah and Hindustani Bangha, Imre. 2010. Rekhta: Poetry in Mixed Language: The Emergence of Khari Boli Literature in North India. In Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture, edited by Francesca Orsini. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan.
Busch, Allison. 2010. Rekhta: Poetry in Mixed Language: The Emergence of Khari Boli Literature in North India. In Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture, edited by Francesca Orsini. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. Lelyveld, David 1993. Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani. Comparative Studies of Society and History 35(4):665-82. Cohn, Bernard. 1996. The Command of Language and the Language of Command, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp.16-56. Additional suggested readings for Weeks 11-13: Faruqi, Shamsur Rehman. 2001. Early Urdu Literary Culture and History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. King, Christopher Rolland. 1994. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. Bombay: Oxford Univ. Press. Rahman, Tariq. 2011. From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Rai, Amrit. 1984. A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi. Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press. Week 14: Beyond Mono-linguistic Cultures and Other Ways of Literary History Behl, Aditya. 2007. Presence and Absence in Bhakti: An Afterword. International Journal of Hindu Studies 11, no. 3: 319-24. Orsini, Francesca. 2012. How to Do Multilingual Literary History? Lessons from Fifteenthand Sixteenth-century North India. Indian Economic & Social History Review 49, no. 2: 225-46. Orsini, Francesa. 2010. Barahmasas in Hindi and Urdu, In Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture, edited by Francesca Orsini. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. Phukan, Shantanu. 2001. 'Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet': The Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian. Indian Economic & Social History Review 38, no. 1: 33-58. Ramanujan, A. K. 1991b. Three Hundred Rāmāyaṇas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation. In The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan, edited by Vinay Dharwadker.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Shackle, Christopher. 2007. The Story of Sayf Al-Mulūk in South Asia. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 17, no. 2 (April 2): 115-29. Week 15: Wrap up discussion (Lecture Rescheduled from Week 1) Ramanujan, A. K. 1991a. Where Mirrors Are Windows. In The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan, edited by Vinay Dharwadker. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Shahid, Taimoor. Notes Towards a Dehistoricist Literary History of North India. MA Thesis, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University, 2013. Student responses