ENG 6560.10 Partitioned Modernities: Intimacy, Secularism, and National Culture in South Asia

New Asian Studies Graduate Course!

Rome 771

Wednesdays 

03:30PM - 06:00PM

Course Description:

1947 was a crucial year for world history, as the end of WWII and decolonization over 1947-48 ushered in many new nations and invented new national communities and identities. This course focuses on what happened in 1947 in India, in relation to these global transformations; it engages postcolonial theories of nationalism, gender studies and historiography with literature and cinema to illuminate the cultural representation of the 1947 Partition of India and its social and political legacies for contemporary South Asia. Drawing upon a range of disciplines, the course examines the violent migrations that occurred during 1947, and its link to contemporary conflicts (war, ethnic conflict, refugee displacement, property rights) and ideas about citizenship, political belonging, intimacy, and secularism. We will look at different registers: literature, film, print media, visual and new media.  How gender, ethnicity and disability inflect these histories and texts will be integral to the story we will tell. No prior knowledge of South Asia required.

Readings include works by Paul Scott, Salman Rushdie, Homi Bhabha, Judith Butler, Vikram Chandra, Amitav Ghosh, Saadat Hasan Manto, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Tim Brennan, Pheng Cheah, Talal Asad, Sunil Khilnani, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gayatri Spivak, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Deepa Ollapally, among others.  Films we will watch include Hindi cinema as well as third cinema, like "Delhi 6", "Parzania," and "My Son, the Fanatic."

Dr. Kavita Daya 

Associate Professor of English 

Kavita Daiya is Associate Professor of English, as well as affiliated faculty and Executive Committee member of the Women's Studies Program at GWU. A literary and film critic, and scholar of transnational cultural studies, Dr. Daiya's research engages the field of feminist postcolonial studies with Asian American Studies. Her specializations include nationalism, gender and sexuality, public culture, migration, and globalization. Her interdisciplinary research and publications have focused on the cultural representation in global media of ethnic belonging, violence, coupledom and diaspora in South Asia, United States and Africa. Her research has been generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the University of Chicago, and George Washington University.  

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