REL 246
India's Identities: Religion, Caste, and Gender Fall 2015
Division II Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed WGSS 246 / ASST 246 / ANTH 246
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This course considers India’s contradictory legacy as a booming Asian democracy and fragile society built upon deep and enduring divisions. Why is India’s growing population so often described in terms of multiple identities or fragmenting oppositions — Hindu/Muslim, rich/poor, high caste/outcaste, male/female? What are the historic roots and ongoing causes that produce structural violence around these axes of difference? We pay particular attention to key moments (Partition, communal riots in Gujarat in 2003, Hyderabad in 1990, Delhi in 1984), and places (Punjab, Bengal, Jammu &b Kashmir) for our analysis of how religion, gender, and caste intersect to produce a landscape of communal violence, social hierarchy, and fragmented subjectivity in India today. We are as interested in discourses and practices that shore up these binaries as well as the third terms that attempt to transcend or diffuse them. For instance, we look at hoe Buddhism is and is not a middle path between Hindu/Muslim conflict in Indian Kashmir and how a third sex is and is not a middle term that transcends the gender binary of male/female. Our course readings include ethnographic, sociological, and historical analyses, oral histories, and more popular media that attempt to explain India’s diverse and fragmented society. This course fulfills the Exploring Diversity Initiative by theorizing the ways that difference has been used to effect profound historical, social, and individual changes in India.
The Class: Format: tutorial
Limit: 10
Expected: 10
Class#: 1333
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: weekly writing assignments and tutorial attendance every week
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis; not available for the fifth course option
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: majors in Anthropology and Sociology, Religion, Asian Studies, or Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
WGSS 246 Division II ASST 246 Division II ANTH 246 Division II REL 246 Division II
Attributes: GBST South + Southeast Asia Studies
PHLH Bioethics + Interpretations of Health
WGSS Racial Sexual + Cultural Diversity Courses

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