Imagining Indian Pasts: History, Heritage, and Cultural Memory

3.0 credits · Undergraduate

Is the Indian past real or imagined? Why might different communities, or successive generations, tell the same history differently? Can history be told through myth, fiction, or popular films? Does it belong to individuals or collectives, and can it be bought and sold? If history is written by the victors, then where can we find unwritten and marginal histories? In this course, students will be introduced to major debates in the fields of Indian historiography, mnemohistory, and memory studies. We will discuss how India’s past has been reimagined over time by pursuing close analysis of primary texts, visual artifacts, and film. Students will become familiar with multilingual genres of history writing in Sanskrit, Persian, and vernaculars like Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, and Tamil. We will also learn about the impact of Christian mission, European colonization, tourism, immigration, heritage industries, and the rise of digital media on practices of cultural memory. (ASIAN-SC)