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Course Description |
As the success of Booker Prize winning authors like Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy suggests, South Asia is today one of the world's most vibrant areas of literary and cultural production. This course will give Acadia students the opportunity to study the masterful fiction and film of South Asia with a specific focus on India. We will explore fairly recent developments in the Indian literary and filmic tradition, paying particular attention to the history of colonialism and independence, and tracing the developments in narrative form to the rise of Indian nationalism. We will also consider issues of language, religion, race, and gender. All classes will be structured around close readings, discussions, and presentations. Several classes will involve group work. Participation in class discussions and presentations is mandatory and has been assigned a significant mark. Because of the assignment structure of this class, and because of its collaborative nature, attendance is mandatory. Students who miss more than three classes without a doctor's note will see their participation grades drop severely. While this is an English course and while it will run in most ways like any other course I teach, it is also being offered under the auspices of the Humanities Hypermedia Centre (HHC) at Acadia University. For the purposes of this course, the HHC designation means that there will be a variety of assignment options available to students: traditional research papers, hypermedia projects, and wiki entries. A course wiki, Wiki Ganesha, has been set up for the development of the latter (see more on Assignments below). We will screen the films outside of our regularly scheduled classes. Attendance at these screenings, while not compulsory, is very important. If you cannot make the screenings, you are responsible for renting and watching the films on your own time before we discuss the films in class. Because of the collaborative, work intensive nature of this course, there will be no final exam. |
Mark Distribution |
| Wiki Entry #1 | 20% |
| Wiki Entry #2 | 20% |
| Essay or Hypermedia Project | 40% |
| Participation | 20% |
Week 1 |
Sept. 8: Course Introduction |
Week 2 |
Sept. 13: A Brief Introduction to India Sept. 15: Intro to Key Terms in Postcolonial Studies; Intro to Wiki Ganesha and Hypermedia Project. |
Week 3 |
Sept. 20: Narayan's The Man-eater of Malgudi Sept. 22: The Man-eater of Malgudi |
Week 4 |
Sept. 27: The Man-eater of Malgudi; Presentations: Ashley Crawford "Narayan", Jen Knoch "Vishnu"; Tshewang Drukdra "Ramayana" Sept. 28: Attenborough's Gandhi Screening Sept. 29: Gandhi Discussion; Presentations: Nels Grauman Neader "Bhagavad Gita" |
Week 5 |
Oct. 4: Singh's Train to Pakistan Oct. 6: Train to Pakistan |
Week 6 |
Oct. 11:Train to Pakistan; Presentations: Philip Wilder "Punjab", Andrea Assels "Monsoons", Josh Garagan "Kalyug", Jen Jones "Karma" Oct. 12: Mehta's Earth Screening Oct. 13:Earth Discussion; Presentations: Caitlin Iles "Partition", Andrew Lang-Weir "Salman Rushdie" |
Week 7 |
Oct. 18 Rushdie's Midnight's Children Oct. 20: Midnight's Children |
Week 8 |
Oct. 25: Midnight's Children; Presentations: Nels Grauman Neander "Shiva", Daniel O'Shea "Lord Krishna", Jen Jones "Bollywood"; Zanne Handley "Chutney" Oct. 27: Midnight's Children; Presentations: Alena Kunkel "Parvati", Caitlin Iles "Magic Realism" |
Week 9 |
Nov. 1: Midnight's Children; Presentations: Jess Clemons "Mumbai", Jeff Lang-Weir "Muslims and Islam", Lindsay McCarthy "Amritsar Massacre" Nov. 3: Mistry's Tales from Firozsha Baag: "Auspicious Occasion" and "The Collectors"; Presentations: Ashley Crawford "India", Laura Cudmore "Kashmir", Tessa Sheppard "The Koran" |
Week 10 |
Nov. 8: TFFB: "Exercisers" and "Squatter"; Presentations: Andrea Assels "The Emergency", Jeff Lang-Weir "Pakistan", Luke Freeman "Ganesh" Nov. 9: Gunnarsson's Such a Long Journey Screening Nov. 10: Such a Long Journey Discussion; Presentations: Tshewang Drukdra "The Mutiny", Jess Clemons "Colonial Education", Lindsay McCarthy "Parsi Baag", Deidra-Lee Bean "Diaspora" |
Week 11 |
Nov. 15: TFFB: "Lend Me Your Light" and "Swimming Lessons"; Presentations: Suzanne Handley "Parsis and Zoroastrianism", Laura Cudmore "Buddhists and Buddhism" Nov. 17: Roy's The God of Small Things |
Week 12 |
Nov. 22: The God of Small Things; Presentations: Jen Knoch "The God of Small Things", Tessa Sheppard "Communism in India", Philip Wilder "Untouchables" Nov. 24: The God of Small Things; Presentations: Daniel O'Shea "Christians and Christianity in India", Heather Chamberlin "Arundhoti Roy", Andrew Lang-Weir "Kerala" |
Week 13 |
Nov. 29:The God of Small Things; Presentations: Alena Kunkel "Caste" Nov. 30: Nair's Monsoon Wedding Screening Dec. 1: Monsoon Wedding Discussion; Presentations: Luke Freeman "Monsoon Wedding" , Heather Chamberlin "Feminism and Postcolonialism", Deidra--Lee Bean "Delhi"; Due date for Essay/Hypermedia Project |
Assignment Policies |
You will have the option of writing one research paper (8-10 page, 2000-2500 words) or creating one hypermedia project for this class (2000 word minimum; no maximum). By the second week of class, you will have to indicate your preference. In both cases, choose your topics from a list below. I will consider allowing you to devise your own topic, but you must consult me and receive approval before proceeding. The research papers and hypermedia projects are due on the final day of classes. Papers and projects will not be accepted after the final due date unless accompanied by a doctor's letter. During the course of the term, you will also be expected to write two Wiki Ganesha entries (800-1000 words each), chosen from the wiki topics listed below. As with the research papers and hypermedia projects, I will consider allowing you to devise your own topic, but you must consult with me and receive approval before proceeding. At certain points during the course (see weekly outline), you will be expected to give brief presentations (up to 5 minutes) on your wiki entries. Failure to show up for you presentations will result in a 25% deduction from your wiki marks. All students are also expected to read and comment on wiki entries written by their classmates. You are welcome to revise your wiki entry in light of the comments you receive from your classmates up until the last day of class (December 1). I will provide interim marks and comments on each wiki entry after your presentations, but your final wiki mark will be based on the final product as of the last day of class. Students are required to read pages from the Acadia University Calendar regarding academic integrity and the discipline. I also highly recommend that you check out the following the following:
And by all means, drop by to see me during my office hours if you need clarification on any point of concern. |
Assignments |
Wiki Ganesha |
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Wiki Ganesha is a site dedicated to creating a scholarly knowledge base for understanding South Asia. Each student registered in English 3663 will generate two wiki articles of 800-1000 words on a variety of topics germane to the study of South Asian Literature. Students enrolled in subsequent offerings of the course will benefit from the articles posted by earlier classes, and they will build on the knowledge base with articles of their own. Moreover, the page should serve a constituency beyond Acadia University, students of South Asian literature around the world, all of whom are welcome to participate in a wider dialogue on South Asia. Wiki articles are essentially collaborative. While each student will generate and post her/his own articles to the site by assigned dates, all students in English 3663 are expected to read all articles, making suggestions for changes where appropriate. Your participation grade in the class will be determined in large part by your collaboration on wiki entries. If you are the kind of student who is quiet in class and who suffers from low participation grades, here is a unique opportunity to boost participation grades. You cannot write Wiki articles without conducting scholarly research of some sort. While you are welcome to begin your research by searching the web, do not end there. You will have to use the library's resources to conduct your research, at times making use of interlibrary loans. So get started early! Feel free to use multimedia in your articles (pictures, sounds, film clips), but make sure you credit all your sources in a works cited list following strict MLA format. You might also want to include a list of suggested readings. Every student must give a brief presentation on her/his wiki articles on assigned dates. Under no circumstances will presentations be allowed to go over 5 minutes, and I will be quite merciless about keeping you to the allotted time. The presentations should summarize your findings and might even show how your entry is useful to the text we are reading at the time. Feel free to talk about the process of creating your wiki article as part of your presentation. Anything that might help future contributors to avoid difficulties would be particularly useful. For more about Wikis, what they are, and how they work, see the Wikipedia article on Wikis . You might also want to visit the main page of Wikipedia and read a few basic articles to get a sense of the style of a wiki entry. |
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| Wiki Article Topics | |
Author/Director Biographies and List of Works
Annotated Bibliographies of Works Studied
Historical Figures and Events
Nations, States, and Cities
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Religions, Cultural Groups, and Religious Texts of South Asia
General Themes, Issues, and Figures
Postcolonial Theory Terms
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Essays |
Write an argumentative research paper of 8-10 pages (2000-2500 words) on one of the general topics listed under Essay/Hypermedia Project Topics. The Essay is a traditional assignment, a genre with which all of you are familiar by this point in your academic careers. I want to stress, however, that this is a research paper. Secondary sources are required, and they should be chosen with great care. While the world wide web is a good starting point for research, it has a long way to go before it is a truly credible source for academic research. The vast majority of the material you consult and use, therefore, should be from the library--either in the form of books or in the form of journal articles (N.B. Electronic journal articles you find through the library's search engine are not the same as vanity articles you find on the world wide web through your favourite search engine. They are refereed, meaning they have gone through a rigorous vetting process before publication.). Get an early start on things because you might have to get some books and articles through interlibrary loan. Be sure to follow strict MLA format in your papers and your Works Cited list. On the last day of class, you will submit your essays to a personal assignment directory on the plato server. |
Hypermedia Project |
Create a Hypermedia Project (2000 word minimum; no maximum) based on one of the general topics listed under Essay/Hypermedia Project Topics. The Hypermedia Project is a non-traditional writing assignment. Using Microsoft Word or an HTML editor of your choice, you'll create a document that contains hypermedia elements (hyperlinks, pictures, sounds, movie clips) to support what you are writing about. While I would expect an argument of some sort to underwrite what you are creating, I can also envision a Hypermedia Project that is primarily expository in nature. A simple argumentative Hypermedia Project (the equivalent of a hypermedia essay) might try to prove a point about one of the films we are screening while making generous use of clips from the film in the document, then providing a detailed analysis of those clips in the service of an argument. A more elaborate version of the argumentative Hypermedia Project might contain several supplemental documents or links that explain theoretically, culturally, and historically relevant issues (the equivalent of explanatory endnotes or footnotes, complete with pictures and sounds). An expository Hypermedia Project might take one of the issues below and provide a detailed cultural and historical background for understanding and interpreting the text. So, for instance, if you elect to discuss the role of women in any of the works we are studying, you might try to explain the way women have been and are perceived in a particular South Asian culture, in religious art and texts, in historical documents, or in the political lives of their communities. Then you would draw connections between the cultural/religious/historical/political roles of women in the nation and the text. As with the essay, research is a requirement of the Hypermedia Project. See the paragraph above concerning credible secondary sources. Note also that a Works Cited page in MLA format should be appended to the Hypermedia Project. On the last day of class, you will submit your Hypermedia Project to a personal assignment directory on the plato server. N.B. The best Hypermedia projects will be nominated for a prize from the HHC. Click here for more details. |
| Essay and Hypermedia Project Topics |
For any of the works we study, consider one of the following:
Feel free to make use of the research you conduct for wiki entries in your Essays and your Hypermedia Projects. Due Date: 1 December 2005 |