Professor
Priya Joshi
Fall
1999
Seminars:
F 1-3:30
Office:
6179 Helen C. White Hall
Office
Hours: Wednesday, 12-2 & ba
Phone:
608-263-3757
Email:
pjoshi@socrates.berkeley.edu
The Course
This seminar is an exploration of nationalism and post-colonial theory–two critical impulses that have done much to revise literary studies in the last quarter century or so. The broad question anchoring our investigation will be to study how nationalism is represented in the once-colonial world. Using India as a case study, we will test Benedict Anderson's claim that the novel was one of the best forms for representing the kind of imagined community that is the nation. How valid does this claim remain beyond European nationalisms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Did empire and its reliance on narrative forms such as the novel "contaminate" them for nationalist writing in the colonial and post-colonial world? Are twentieth-century forms of representation such as film better suited and more capable of furthering nationalist discourse in the periphery?
We will read a cluster of writings on nationalism and post-colonial theory to help map our critical terrain and to define a set of theoretical questions for the course. We will follow this by close and attentive reading of 4-5 Indian novels from the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and an interspersed viewing of 3-4 popular Hindi films from the 1950s-1970s that tackle many of the issues provoked by our theoretical inquiry. Our work in the seminar will emphasize different ways of "reading" these novels and films; thinking about their consumption and participation in public culture; and trying to use them productively in dialogue with each other and the theoretical material that frames the course.
Course requirements: Attendance and vigorous participation in all discussions; an oral presentation; a 12-15 page paper due in class on December 10th.
The Texts
(with the exception Anandamath, all are available from the
University Book Store on State Street)
*Available
at the Den Copy Center
Additionally, a Reader with required critical and theoretical material for the course is available from the Den Copy Center, 555-B State Street, phone: 250-5922.
The Films
We will view the following films in clips or in entirety:
Awaara
(The Vagabond, 1951; dir. Raj Kapoor)
Amar,
Akbar, Anthony (1977; dir. Manmohan Desai)
Charulata
(1964; dir. Satyajit Ray)
Ghaire
Baire (The Home and the World, 1984; dir. Satyajit Ray)
Pakeeza
(The Pure Heart, 1971; dir. Kamal Amrohi)
Shatranj
ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977; dir. Satyajit Ray)
Sholay,
(Flames, 1975; dir. Ramesh Sippy)
Shri
420 (The Gentleman Cheat, 1955; dir. Raj Kapoor)
Umraon
Jan Ada (1981; dir. Muzaffar Ali)
The Listserve
In order to facilitate discussion and exchange, I have set up a course discussion listserve: engl823-f99@lists.students.wisc.edu. All students who are registered in this course will be automatically added to this email list and will receive any postings made to it. I strongly encourage you to share questions, suggestions, and resources of interest on this listserve.
Schedule
of Readings
(Note:
Asterisked readings can be found in the Course Reader)
9/3: Welcome and Introduction
A Brief History of India
9/10: Readings in Indian History
Percival Spear, A History of India, v. 2: Chapters 10-13
*Sumit Sarkar, "Middle Class Consciousness & Politics"
*Jawaharlal Nehru, "Tryst with Destiny"
9/17: No Class
9/24: Nationalism
Renan, "What is a Nation?" in Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
10/1: Inventing the Nation
*Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Anandamath
*T.W. Clark: "Introduction: The Novel in India"
Meenakshi Mukherjee, "From Purana to Nutana," Realism and Reality
Eric Hobsbawm, "Inventing Traditions" in Hobsbawm & Ranger, eds.
Recommended:
*Priya Joshi, "The Novel in India"
Mukherjee, Realism and Reality, chapters 2-5
*Sisir Kumar Das, "The Story of a Song"
10/8: The National Longing for Form
Ruswa, Umraon Jan Ada
*Veena Oldenburg, "The Courtesans of Lucknow"
Bernard Cohn, "Representing Authority in Victorian India" in Hobsbawm & Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition
Clips from Umraon Jan Ada, Pakeeza, and The Chess Players
10/15: Where Have all the Women Gone?
Tagore, The Home and the World
*Partha Chatterjee, "The Nation and its Women"
*Sumit Sarkar, "The Partition of Bengal" from Modern India
Clips from Ghaire Baire and Charulata
Recommended:
*Radha Kumar, The History of Doing, pp. 32-52
10/22: Cinema, the New Medium
*Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy, Indian Film, especially:
"Beginnings," "Empire," "Studio," "Industry," "Wide World"
Sumita Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, chapters 1-3
10/29: Fabricating Fantasy
Awara [The Vagabond]
*Sudhir Kakar, "The Cinema as Public Fantasy"
*Khushwant Singh, "We Sell them Dreams" New York Times Magazine, 31 October 1976, pp. 42-ff.
11/5: The Rights of Man
Shri 420
Ashis Nandy, The Secret Politics of Our Desires, "Introduction"
11/12: The Myth of the Nation
Amar, Akbar, Anthony
11/19: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Sholay
*"Fundamental Blunder" and "Flaming Success" in India 50: The Making of a Nation, pp. 130-138.
*"Indian Cinema: Shading Out Reality" in Economist, Feb. 27, 1999, pp. 82-83.
Recommended:
Ziauddin Sardar, "Dilip Kumar Made me do It" in Nandy, Secret Politics pp. 19-91
11/26: No Class; Thanksgiving Holiday
12/3: Midnight in the Garden of Black & White
Midnight's Children
*David Lipscomb, "Caught in a Strange Middle Ground: Contesting History in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children"
12/10: The Family Romance Persists
The Shadow Lines
*Ghosh, "The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi"