Syllabus

The Literature of Modern, South Asian Islam

English 379 S

Fall 2009

S. Shingavi

27 Parlin Hall

snehal.shingavi@mail.utexas.edu

Office Hours: MWF 12-1 (or by appt.)

Course Description:

At least three important historical events have shaped the history of Islam on the Indian subcontinent: the war for Indian independence (1857), also called the Indian Mutiny; Partition (1947); and the spectacular demolition of the Babri Masjid and the anti-Muslim riots which followed (1992). Each of these events brought about a crisis in ways that Muslims understood their identity, their religion, and their futures. In many ways, these political developments can be understood as a protracted crisis of modernity, both in Islam’s multiple reactions and responses to modernity and the successes and failures of modernity’s offerings for Muslims.

One of the ways that Muslims sought to understand their own rapidly changing social positions was through the massive eruption of literary responses to political transformations. Religious thinkers and partisans were quick to turn to print capitalism as a way to spread their ideas, but writers and intellectuals also turned to novelistic and poetic attempts at making sense of a new world. At the same time, a whole series of laws were being implemented which defined “Muslim” in new and complicated ways. From the inside and out, Islam was undergoing a facelift.

This course will examine how modernity is experienced through the eyes of religious believers—those who adapted their faiths to modernity, those who abandoned Islam for cosmopolitanism, and those who found answers in returning to what they believed were more foundational moments in the history of the religion. And, this class will explore both the potentialities and the pitfalls with understanding something like a composite Muslim identity in South Asia, as that identity is cleft by class, gender, caste, linguistic, sexual, racial, sectarian, and geopolitical divisions. Necessarily, then, we will confront issues related to nation-states, education, censorship, violence, class conflict, and tradition.

This course will also interrogate how cultural studies, religious studies, comparative literature, and translation theory can all be brought to bear on literary analysis and theory. Students are not expected to have any background in Islam or South Asian history, so the literature will be supplemented with historical articles as well as class lectures.

Reading List:

Ali, Twilight in Delhi (English)

Chughtai, The Crooked Line (Urdu)

Faiz, Rebel’s Silhouette (Urdu)

Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (English)

Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column (English)

Manto, Selected Short Stories (Urdu)

Nasrin, Shame (Bangla)

Reza, A Village Divided (Hindi)

Rushdie, Shame (English)

Ruswa, Umrao Jaan Ada (Urdu)

Thanawi, Bihishti Zewar (Urdu)

Assignments:

Research proposal 10%

Rough draft (8-10 pages) 15%

Draft bibliography (5-8 sources minimum) 10%

Annotated bibliography (10 sources minimum) 15%

Final paper (15-20 pages) 30%

Course blog 20%

Annotated Bibliography:

Part of the goal of this class is to familiarize students with research methods in underrepresented literatures. Students will be asked to produce a bibliography of works relevant to their final paper topics. Sources can include literary criticism, newspapers, journal articles, books, and primary source materials. Annotations should be approximately 100 to 150 words in length.

Paper:

There is one research paper in this class divided up into two parts (a rough-draft and a final). The paper should cover at least one of the texts covered in class and should be relevant to the themes of a course on Islam and South Asia. Other than those limits, students are free to choose topics of their own liking. Students wishing for more direction will be provided with prompts for final papers. All papers should be one-sided, with 1” margins, double-spaced, proofread, page-numbered, with consistent MLA style, and in your best academic prose.

Course Blog:

You will be asked to contribute to the course blog at least once a week. Your contributions will include both an original post (100-150 words) and a response to a classmate’s post (50-100 words). Topics for posts can be: issues not raised by class, alternative directions that a question raised in class could have gone, passages from texts (with commentary) that are intriguing but not raised in class, and disagreements born out of class discussion. The course blog should be seen as a way to continue the discussion in class, especially those ideas and issues that are left underdeveloped in classroom conversations. I will also pick one person each class to post notes from the class discussion to the blog in lieu of his/her post for that week. IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you use the blog to test out ideas related to your final paper. Students will have access to the course’s Blackboard site through UT Direct.

Grading Policy:

Final grades will be determined on the basis of the following rubric. Please note: to ensure fairness, all final grades will be rounded to the nearest whole number (so 89.5 is an A- while an 89.499 is a B+). The University of Texas does not recognize the grade of A+

A= 94-100

A- = 90-93

B+ = 87-89

B = 84-86

B- = 80-83

C+ =77-79

C = 74-76

C- = 70-73

D+ = 67-69

D = 64-66

D- = 60-63

F = 0-59

Students with Disabilities:

Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, (512-471-6259)