Islamic Imaginaries from South Asia

This course will examine the intellectual, political, and cultural imaginaries of South Asia’s Muslims as they engaged with the institutions and technologies of modernity. It will explore the formations of religious community, conceptions of rule, anticolonial thought, national belonging, minoritization, and subalternity among Muslims across colonial and postcolonial periods. Through a close reading of primary sources, films, and literature, the course will critically examine the tensions between collective identity and individual aspirations, secularism and religion, ethics and politics to understand what it has meant to be a Muslim in the modern era. Finally, the course will pay particular attention to historical methods and think through alternative ways of researching and writing the histories of marginalized communities.