India, South Asia, and the American University (First-Year Seminar)

1 Course Unit

This interdisciplinary course uses intersections between India/South Asia, the region's peoples, and the American university (including Penn specifically) to introduce students to archival, anthropological, and oral history research methods. Students will engage with a range of textual, archival, visual, and material collections and databases available at Penn and in Philadelphia, with particular attention to India and South Asia, and will have opportunities to practice using a range of historical and anthropological research methods and materials. Class activities may include visits to the University Archives; the Penn Musuem’s object collections and archives; the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts; the Fisher Fine Arts Library; Penn’s Architecture Archives; other special collections on campus; the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF); the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). Topics may include the history of Elihu Yale, East India Company trade, and the founding of Yale University; W. Norman Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, and the history of Indian and South Asian Area Studies in the United States; Anandibai Joshee and the history of women’s medical education in Philadelphia; Stella Kramrisch, the history of Indian art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Kanji Dwarkadas and Indian labor movements; the history of U.S. immigration policy as it has impacted South Asians; the history of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the United States; architects Muzharul Islam and Penn professor Louis Kahn and the building of the Bangladeshi National Assembly Building; A. K. Ramanujan and the study of Indian epics and folklore; the Amar Chitra Katha comic books and Indian historical narratives; and South Asian Americans and debates over affirmative action in American universities. Students will also design an archival, anthropological, or oral history project on a topic of their choice as a final project. The course is ideal as an introduction to the excellent libraries and research collections housed at Penn and in Philadelphia, and as an introduction to a wide range of methods and intellectual frameworks for engaging with these collections - a great way to kick off your undergraduate experience at Penn! Fall Also Offered As: ANTH 0059, HIST 0059 1 Course Unit